Making of Amistad

The Plaster model submitted for the project.

Final version selected as winning model for The Amistad Memorial. Original plaster version in the collection of the African-American Historical Society in New Haven, CT.

Making the armature to support the clay

Ed Hamilton working on the large clay version
of the Amistad Memorial

The top of the Memorial is a result of the emotional level of my personal experiences researching for information about slave trading. From the second floor of City Hall you look down and contemplate this final view of the Memorial. Could this be our brother, Foone, who drowned in the Farmington Canal? Or, you could say that this figure, awash in the vastness of an ocean, represents the souls of the many Africans who did not finish their journey of the Middle Passage. I will let you, as viewer, debate the meaning of this journey.

Cast in bronze at Bright Foundry in Louisville, Kentucky and being chased and cleaned for final finish to be put on.

Installed in front of City Hall, downtown New Haven, CT. Partial shot of front and back side.

Final version in bronze showing Sengbe Pieh on triangular base of granite.