NEWBURYPORT – The city expects this spring to install Sail Trace, a tall clipper ship sculpture, in Market Landing Park on the Merrimack River waterfront.
Designed and created by Portland, Me. sculptor Aaron T Stephan, the art work, chosen by the city’s Public Art Committee from 20 entries, is likely to be the city’s signature sculpture on its popular waterfront park.
Stephan proposed and the committee agreed last week to enhance the metal sculpture with a quotation by 19th century writer and anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass:
Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll.
The sculpture and the quotation by Douglass seem fitting for the principal waterfront art work.
Starting this summer, it will be viewed by thousands of visitors to the park as they walk only yards away from “turbid waters” of the river. The clipper ships, which were built in Newburyport waterfront shipyards, was so important to the city’s history that it serves as the Newburyport High School’s mascot.
A quotation from Douglass also fits well with the city’s commitment to its African American history, including its role in opposing slavery. A few blocks away in Brown Square in front of City Hall is a statue of William Lloyd Garrison, the Great Liberator, born in Newburyport, who helped launch Douglass’ career.
It also blends well with the Newburyport Black Initiative (NBI), a program designed to educate 21st Century visitors and residents about the city’s black history. That history includes a plaque to African American seamen, who probably sailed on the clipper ships built here.
From Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the national abolitionist leader who escaped from slavery in Maryland and lived in Massachusetts and New York, wrote: “You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!”
Aaron T Stephan creates his art in a studio two blocks from Portland’s working docks. In an interview last year, Stephan attributed his walks around the docks to his inspiration to create a tall clipper ship sculpture for Market Landing Park.
Born in Springville, NY, Stephan works in sculpture and mixed media, according to his web site, aarontstephan.com. The sculpture will be erected in one of the park’s most prominent spots off the new bike trail that links the two sections of the Clipper City Rail Trail.
“I am really excited about this project,” Stephan said.
The Public Arts Committee is composed of Peter Carzasty, Paula Estey, Katherine Moran, Shanna Sartori, Cynthia Schartman, Kim Turner and Nichole Whelan. City Planning Director Andy Port, who oversees the entire park development, is coordinating the project. ♦
