CARSON – In what some officials hailed as a historic day, officials from the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles joined by council members and the Mayor held a ground breaking ceremony on a new Jose P. Rizal monument at the future site of the International Sculpture Garden in this city.
“This is certainly a historic moment for all of us,” said Consul General Mary Jo Aragon in front of a large crowd gathered on a grassy area across the east parking lot of the Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald Community Center. “I am so grateful to the City of Carson for giving us a place to honor our national hero Dr. Jose P. Rizal. For his love of country, his passion for his countrymen, his love of justice and equality, these are all ideals that continue to be relevant today. We hope that this is the beginning for the younger generation to learn more about the life and work Dr. Jose P. Rizal not only for the city of Carson but to other neighboring cities as well as Southern California.”
Given the large Filipino and Filipino-American population in California, this the first Rizal statue in the state.
The Rizal statue will be the first monument erected in the International Sculpture garden. The statue will be a 7 foot bronze figure mounted on a 6 foot granite pedestal.
The sculpture is a work of renowned Filipino sculptor Toym De Leon Imao, and is a gift from the Republic of the Philippines to the City.
Officials said that the monument will be unveiled in a special ceremony in early 2012.
Mayor Jim Dear said he has been working on the idea of an international sculpture garden since 2004. His idea was for the city to have public art on display and “what better to showcase it on a garden.”
He bounced the idea to other council members of having sculptures of heroes from around the world to represent Carson’s cultural diversity.
Dear contacted Chito Mandap, the chairman of the Jose P. Rizal Monument Movement, to help him gather support from the community.
It wasn’t until last year when the Carson City Council approved the creation of the International Sculpture Garden to showcase public art that the ball on the project started rolling. Dear and the city council reached out to various nations through their respective consulates to seek works of art to display on the site of the international scrulpture garden. The Philippines immediately responded. Two other nations – the Republic of Azerbaijan and Japan – have also expressed interest in donating an art piece for city’s Sculpture Garden.
“The theme of the garden is celebrating the ‘Heroes of liberation, freedom and justice from around the world,’” said Dear. “Carson being an ethnically diverse city, we feel it’s extremely appropriate to have as much representation as possible.”
“Needless to say this has been a dream for the Filipino community for quite a number of years,” said Mandap. “Jose Rizal is the greatest Filipino we’ve ever had and probably will ever have. He’s known all over the world. He’s a genius and putting up the monument we hope to galvanize the community because he is the common denominator for all of the Filipinos in this part of the world.”
Rizal, who was executed by firing squad in 1896, was a primary proponent for peaceful reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish regime. He was a scholar, a writer, an anthropologist, and a polyglot who mastered 22 languages, and hailed as a martyr by the Filipino people for paving the way for its independence from Spain.
Monuments of Rizal stand in eight US cities including Juneau, Alaska; Kauai and Lihue in Hawaii; Chicago, Illinois, Orlando, Florida; Cherry Hill in New Jersey, New York City and Seattle, Washington. Rizal monuments also stand in other parts of the world, including Argentina, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland, among others.
Dear said environmental experts will have to evaluate the landfill and check the soil to make sure that any statue erected in the garden will not tilt or sink into the ground.
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek Nov 9-11, 2011 Sec A pg.1)
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