Resident artist, Brenda Councill has been recognized nationally for a sculpture monument project. Through a partnership with Mandarin Museum & Historical Society in Jacksonville, Fl., Councill has completed the first phase of work on the first life-size likeness of Harriet Beecher Stowe, in the United States. Stowe was a famous nineteenth-century abolitionist and author of the 1852 anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The sculpture is comprised of 3 figures and titled, “Harriet Beecher Stowe in Mandarin,” Councill’s bronze sculpture will represent Stowe as she was while living in Mandarin, a suburb of Jacksonville, Fl. during the winters of 1867 through 1884.
The completed clay sculpture has been delivered from her temporary studio in Florida to Carolina Bronze Foundry in Seagrove, North Carolina.
The project has won the approval of the City of Jacksonville and Florida Communities Trust. In addition, Joan D. Hedrick, author of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize winning biography Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, has offered her endorsement stating, “it is entirely fitting that such a monument be placed there. It will celebrate one of America’s most prolific and influential writers…[and] commemorate Stowe’s profound love of Florida. I heartily endorse this movement to celebrate her life, work, and time in Mandarin.” Councill’s vision is also timely in that The Florida Commission on the Status of Women recently selected Harriet Beecher Stowe as a 2023 finalist to be considered for the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame. “She spent 17 winters here and I thought her legacy needed to be recognized in a big way,” Councill said. “I just wasn’t satisfied with a historic plaque on the side of the road.” And “I felt like the public really needed to visit a site that she would have walked on and feel the impact within this community on the grounds of the Mandarin Museum,” Councill told ABC News.
During Stowe’s years in Mandarin, she was a vocal advocate for Florida’s uplift following the U.S. Civil War. She published Palmetto Leaves in 1873, a collection of essays regarding her life in Mandarin that also promoted Florida’s potential for tourism, industry, and expanded education. She worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau to establish a school for Black children in the community, purchasing the land herself and hiring the first teacher.
It is Stowe’s devotion to greater access to education that Councill hopes to capture. The bronze sculpture will feature two young boys in addition to Stowe. The scene imagines the boys as laborers in her orange grove who have taken a break to sit with her as she reads to them and provides instruction. Councill said she also gained support from Stowe’s great-great granddaughter, Rosamond Warren-Allen, of Maine, who offered advice to help her with the accuracy of the piece. “She’s been very helpful, She has a vested interest in how she wants her ancestor to look” Councill said.
“It probably would have been a lot easier for me to do this in Seagrove, North Carolina, where the foundry is, but we felt — and I felt – that it was so important to be able to engage the community right from the very beginning, to let them see this,” Councill stated.
Councill has been recognized internationally for many projects and continues her 50 year career in the arts with upcoming projects such as a Women’s Suffrage Monument, and locally, the Boone Sesquicentennial Monument soon to be installed. In Blowing Rock, her work includes a ceiling mural at Rumple Presbyterian Church and the Elliott Daingerfield Statue on Main Street. In 2019 she founded and organized the memorable Sculpture Walk on Chetola Lake. Her other Public Art Installations remain the largest in Watauga County. To donate to this project please visit: https://www.mandarinmuseum.org/
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