Famous for his sculpture work of public monuments and portrait busts, William “Bill” Beckwith is making his way back home to the Queen City for one night.
The Greenville Arts Council will host an evening with Beckwith, where he will present a slideshow of his work and discuss his journey of becoming a successful sculptor.
The free event will be from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at Jake and Freda Stein Hall at E.E. Bass Cultural Arts Center, 323 S. Main St. Refreshments will be available.
Greenville Arts Council Executive Director Eleanor Wright said she is excited to host Beckwith for an evening.
“We are thrilled and the community is thrilled that he is coming and they know he is so talented, gifted and knowledgable. He doesn’t get to come back very often because he’s busy and we are just thrilled he is going to do this for us,” Wright said.
Born in Greenville, Beckwith was 14 years old when he became an apprentice in the studio of Leon Koury at his Nelson Street studio. Koury had studied with Malvina Hoffman in New York, who had studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris.
Beckwith said the first time he went to Koury’s studio, he was immediately in awe with the work he saw inside.
“When I walked in, something happened. There was a magic, there were a lot of portrait heads and figures and paintings everywhere. When I looked at the clay models and plaster heads, there was life in them. Something went off in my head, that first instance changed me,” he said.
Beckwith said he was eager to help in any way he could and began sweeping the floor, cleaning up plaster and eventually assisting with making molds.
“I did whatever I could to be around the process, it fascinated me. I already enjoyed drawing a lot … but the three dimensional, the mechanical aspects of it, really appealed to me.”
As an unofficial apprentice to Koury, Beckwith said he was paid for his work with oil-based clay and instruction.
By 1970, Beckwith had graduated from Greenville High School and went on to attend the University of Mississippi as a sculptor major. Under the instruction of Charles Gross, he learned the bronze casting process. He built a working bronze foundry and received a Graduate Teaching Assistantship in sculpture from 1974–1976. In 1976, he earned a B.F.A. and a M.F.A. in sculpture.
Beckwith owned and operated Vulcan Studios & Foundry, Mississippi’s first commercial, fine arts bronze foundry from 1976–1986.
While casting for other sculptors, he continued to produce gallery work, commissions, and show his bronzes in numerous solo and group shows, including the Frank Marino Gallery and Splashlight Studios in New York, the Louisiana World’s Fair in New Orleans, and at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. He has won numerous awards and honors and is represented in public and private collections nationwide.
In his 45 years of sculpting, Beckwith has commissioned several life-size or larger monuments of people such as Elvis Presley, B.B. King, William Faulkner, Jefferson Davis, Chickasaw Chief Piomingo and more.
Beckwith’s portrait busts include Jim Henson, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Herman Melville, Congressman Jamie Whitten, Governor William Waller, aviator Al Key, Dr. Manard Quimby and Dr. Tom and Carol McGee.
Beckwith’s work is in private collections throughout the nation as well as 15 permanent collections, including Jim Henson’s bust at the William Alexander Percy Memorial Library in Greenville.
After 18 years of teaching, Beckwith retired from the University of Mississippi Art Department in 2014. Today, he lives in Taylor, where he operates a sculpture studio and produces portrait commissions, public monuments, and personal work in a new 15,000-square-foot studio. He now has his work casted at Inferno Art Foundry in Atlanta.
A piece he is working on currently is of an interactive chess set comprising 30-inch figures where people can play real games of chess. The piece, he said, will be a representation of what he said is a culture war we live in today.
Beckwith said he has seen several of his own students get in serious trouble for activities many people do in their coming-of-age years, such as smoking marijuana.
“The drug war really hit home with me when I was teaching and I saw good kids have their lives, education, futures and families destroyed over basically nothing,” he said. “It hurt my soul. I had one kid go to Parchman, he got gang raped by multiple inmates and he’s dead now. It drove him out of his mind. Another guy I worked with got sent to Parchman on a small drug charge and he got all his teeth knocked out. They left him there in a bloody pile on the floor. … This chess set is about the culture wars, the right and the left, the race wars, the black and the white. I want to do the dark side, and the light side of that.”
Then length of time it takes to create a piece, he said, varies.
“It depends on the piece. Sometimes they come fast and easy, and sometimes you struggle. A portrait head can take a month or three months,” he said, noting a part of the difficulty is working on people who are dead with no visual instruction other than perhaps one photograph.
As he readies to present his slideshow with the Greenville Arts Council, Beckwith said he remembers Wright from his childhood.
“It was a coming of age time for all of us. … Eleanor was someone we worshipped. We followed her around like little puppies. For me to do this now, this circle has completed itself with Eleanor and myself after 50-something years is exciting and meaningful for me.”
Eleanor said she, too, is excited and proud of the work Beckwith has done.
“I am so thrilled for Bill that he’s found his passion and it has paid off in a huge way. He’s so respected as an artist. He has done extraordinarily well and is respected all over the United States and further.”
For more information about Beckwith, visit his website, williambeckwith.com.
