Kevin Kresse was among 36 sculptors throughout the country vying to win the honor of creating a sculpture of country music star Johnny Cash to be placed in the Statuary Hall collection of the U.S. Capitol. Each state is allowed two sculptures of famous natives.
Kresse was in Eureka Springs recently to mount his eight-foot-tall, 1,250-pound bronze sculpture of Cash on a three-by-three-foot pedestal made of limestone quarried by Eureka Stone Company in Elk Ranch, as he wanted the pedestal to be made from Arkansas stone.
“I wanted to make it a total Arkansas product,” Kresse said. “Johnny came from Arkansas, and I am from Arkansas. I have a brother, Greg, and sister, Cynthia, who live in Eureka. When Cynthia had her kitchen redone, I noticed how nice her counter stone was and she told me who had done them.
“I had been coming up here since the 1980s and didn’t know there was a quarry here. I went to see Joel Taylor at Eureka Stone and his stone was perfect. I wanted it white, but not a bright white. I wanted it softer and warmer so you could read dark letters on for a quote from Johnny. Joel’s stone just worked perfectly for what I was envisioning.”
A lot of states are moving now to replace the sculptures they have in the capitol. In some cases, the older statues are of Confederate leaders. Kresse said while the sculptures from Arkansas were not that egregious, most people in the state didn’t remember the people depicted, and that now, there are more famous people from the state deserving the honor.
The Arkansas Legislature chose civil rights activist and publisher, Daisy Bates, for one sculpture and then had to choose between finalists Sam Walton and Johnny Cash for the other. Cash won the vote. “When it was coming down with Sam Walton and Johnny Cash obviously, I had my pom poms out for Johnny,” Kresse said.
Kresse said there may have been a bit of a pushback because of Cash’s personal struggles with substance abuse. But Kresse said in addition to being one of the greatest country music stars, Cash overcame his addictions and continued to write and perform.
“I do a lot of research on anyone I sculpt,” Kresse said. “I probably read eight books or so on him. I watched countless hours of videos and documentaries. And since I was chosen to do the sculpture, I have met so many different people around the state who have personal stories about Johnny. Every stone I turned over was about his kindness and generosity.
“He was very up front about his shortcomings. He was honest about all those problems, but he never boasted about his philanthropy and small acts of kindness to people. It is nice that throughout this process I have grown to love and respect him more than I did at the beginning, which was already quite a bit.”
Cash had a difficult upbringing as the child of poor cotton sharecroppers. Kresse feels particularly bad that after his older brother died when Cash was 12 years old, their father said it should have been Johnny killed instead of his brother.
Kresse put in 48-page applications each for both Bates and Cash and was the only Arkansas sculptor to be a finalist. He wasn’t chosen for Bates but was delighted to be chosen for his hero, Cash.
“The competition was stiff,” Kresse said. “One of the other finalists already had three sculptures in the U.S. Capitol. The other finalist sculpted for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie. I knew I had to bring an A-plus-plus game to the final presentation.”
Kresse’s devotion to sculpting famous musicians from Arkansas no doubt played into his selection.
“I have a deep vested interest in Arkansas musicians,” Kresse said. “I’m a frustrated musician. I write songs but I can’t keep time very well or sing my way out of a bucket. In 2016 I was commissioned to do a sculpture of Levon Helm for his home. At the time, his home was this old shotgun house with a long narrow porch and there was nothing for any music fans to see. But they were finding people all over the world on his porch just to see where one of their heroes grew up.”
Kresse was crossing the Helena bridge over the Mississippi River after visiting Mississippi Blues Trails attractions when he started thinking of all influential musicians who came from Arkansas. That led him to create sculptures of Al Green, Johnny Cash, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Glen Campbell. He was working on a sculpture of Louis Jordan when the D.C. project was announced.
Kresse made his final presentation in June 2021 and got the call within a week after that he had been chosen.
The process of creating the sculpture is complex and involved making a full-figure model, three feet tall, which was scanned and enlarged to create an eight-foot-tall stiff-foam armature. Kresse then sculpted Cash’s figure over the armature using an oil-based clay. The sculpture was then taken to the Crucible Foundry in Norman, Okla., where they began the long process of making a mold of the sculpture and casting it in bronze. Kresse has been using the Crucible Foundry to cast his sculptures for more than 20 years.
Kresse worked with the Cash family regarding the quote on the pedestal base:
“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down.
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town.
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.”
The sculpture was crated and taken back to Kresse’s studio in Little Rock. It is uncertain when the unveiling will be, but he said he hopes it will be in the late spring.