April 04, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1428

CHANGSHA (China): Forty-five years after his “I have a dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr will return to the scene as a three-storey statue made in China by a man known for his sculptures of Mao Zedong.

But Lei Yixin, who will sculpt the centrepiece of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, DC, sees nothing unusual about being entrusted with shaping the lasting image of such an iconic American figure.

“Martin Luther King belonged to the whole world,” Lei said, taking a break from perfecting a 1.2-metre clay model of the statue in his studio in central China’s Hunan province.“His spirit, his ideas and his influence do not belong to one country alone. They are worldwide.” The job appears to be in capable hands.

Looking every bit the archetypal artistic genius in his clay-daubed smock and shoulder-length hair, the restless, chain-smoking Lei is considered one of China’s greatest sculptors.

The 53-year-old’s distinguished body of work ranges from vibrant figures of peasants and workers to statues of political leaders such as Mao that burst with a life not normally seen in political statues.

He has been labelled a “First-Grade Artist” by the government, one of China’s highest art honours.

But Lei admits being humbled by his latest project, which will occupy hallowed ground on Washington’s National Mall between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials when it is erected next year.

“When we first started talking about it, I thought, ‘that doesn’t sound too complicated’. But then they showed me a map of the location — right on the National Mall! What a shock!” said Lei, his tobacco-coarsened voice rising with excitement.

The final product will feature King emerging from a ten-metre block of granite from China’s south-eastern Fujian province, chosen for its beige colour and stability.

Coupled with two other granite pieces, the work will weigh a combined 1,000 tonnes and will be transported to the United States by barge.

“This is the most important project I’ve ever done,” said Lei, who has covered the walls of his studio in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha with dozens of photographs of King to help him soak up the rights leader’s image.

Yet it was only by chance that memorial organisers found Lei when they visited an international granite-carving festival in the American state of Minnesota in June last year to seek top sculptors interested in the job.

“Obviously, they all said yes. But to our surprise, they all said ‘you should talk to that guy over there,’ pointing to Lei,” said Ed Jackson Jr, the memorial’s executive architect.

Lei was found under a tree, taking his customary afternoon nap after finishing his festival sculpture ahead of everyone else, said Jackson, who credits Lei’s “genius and vision” for making important changes to the King sculpture’s planned design.

Lei said he first heard of King as a middle-schooler in the 1960s when the Communist Party had students read King’s “dream” speech, viewed as an eloquent summation of the social equality the party espoused.

Work on the end product will begin in a few months, when Lei travels to a quarry in Fujian with his team of apprentice sculptors who will perform most of the actual work on the massive figure.

Aside from its size, Lei said the project was “not very difficult” from a technical standpoint and he seemed more worried about incurring the wrath of non-smokers during his King-related trips to the United States.

Lei recently came across an article suggesting that the honour of creating the statue should have been awarded to an African-American like King.—AFP