Lincoln’s Melting Head and Artist Sandy Williams IV

I was about 12 when my parents took my younger brother and me on a family vacation from our home in West Hartford, Conn. to Washington, D.C. I remember our meals in the now-defunct Hot Shoppes and spending our nights in a motel on busy New York Avenue.

The most indelible memory of that trip was our visit to the Lincoln Memorial. Taking in the full view of the massive sculpture, Dad was overcome by emotion and began to cry.  My brother and I were impatient. I can’t remember if my father sensed our mood or if we verbalized our desire to move on to another venue.

Dad told us we should show greater interest and respect for Lincoln and his role in the making of our democracy. He was frustrated and angry at our irreverence.

Born in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to one of a small number of Jewish families there, Dad was stationed in Okinawa during World War II. He missed the gruesome battle on that island. But he lost his best childhood friend, Val Lapidow, 19, in the war. Just ten days before the armistice, Lapidow’s company, stationed in Bavaria, was lured into a phony surrender by a fanatical Nazi. So, Dad’s reverence for FDR, Lincoln, and JFK came very naturally.

Memories of Dad and our trip to D.C. came rushing back in late June. I had just finished my morning walk. Reading CNN on my cell phone while sipping on a cold brew outside the local coffee shop, I was drawn to a CNN headline: “It’s so hot in DC, Lincoln’s Wax Head Melted Off.”

The wax statue of Lincoln was located outside Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C., commissioned by arts nonprofit CulturalDC.

Sandy Williams IV, the wax figure’s sculptor, had placed the 6-foot, 3,000-pound statue at the elementary school because it sits atop Camp Barker, which was a Civil War-era community of freed, formerly enslaved, people.

Williams has been producing wax monuments since 2017. The Lincoln piece is part of The 40 ACRES Archive, his multi-media production focusing on the nation’s hidden histories of Freedmen communities and the Reconstruction era.

I immediately focused on the irony of Lincoln’s head melting at this historical moment. Certainly, I wasn’t alone fathoming the January 6 insurrection, the current shape of the Republican Party and the very present threats not just to our democracy but to our climate and our culture. Maybe the melting statue could rescue me from a brief bout of writer’s block.

I intended to develop the ironic theme and see if I could briefly interview the sculptor for some context.

Sandy Williams IV, whose work has been exhibited in solo gallery shows across the U.S. and Canada, was very giving with his time. I was inspired by his lived experience and work.

Respecting both my father’s reverence and Sandy’s thought-provoking creativity, my writing mission changed.

I want my friends and readers to learn a little more about and from this young artist whose website bio describes his work as generating “moments of communal catharsis…using time itself as a material and aims to unfold the hidden legacies of public spaces.”

Catharsis describes a thick slice of Williams’s adolescence. Born in New Jersey in 1992, Williams grew up in Virginia Beach, Va. His father is a veterinarian, and his mother works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In high school, Williams dreamed of a career in professional soccer. If his talents didn’t take him there, he planned to study orthodontia, which he said: “Looked like an easy way to make a lot of money.”

But shortly before his eighteenth birthday, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and began two and one-half years of chemotherapy.

While in treatment, he enrolled in the University of Virginia, attending 300-person biology lectures, still intent on being a doctor.

Nearing the end of his treatments, Williams took an observational drawing class. He told me, “I was no longer interested in being a doctor. My biggest regret or fear when facing mortality was feeling like I didn’t leave any legacy or record.” Art, he says, “gave me the chance to make things that will outlive me, a place where I can make a difference.”

Changing majors, he focused on sculpture and film, influenced deeply by film professor Kevin Jerome Everson who told him, “You’re good. You can make a living with your art.”

While still facing down his own cancer, Williams was soon vividly confronted with its societal equivalent.

In 2017, still in Charlottesville, he was on his way to his job as a server when he witnessed the chilling gathering of white supremacists who had descended upon the city for the “Unite the Right” march. They were protesting the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee monument.

In his sculpture major, Williams had studied monument theory, considering what effect the sculptures have on the landscape and culture. “But the first thing I thought [after the march] was, ‘I have to get out of here,’” he said. He moved to Richmond, where he enrolled in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

In Charlottesville’s wake, classroom discussions exploded into public debate over monuments, says Williams, who now teaches at the University of Richmond while working as a “conceptual artist,” using all kinds of materials, including bronze, wood, film, photography and performance.

After months of discussion in Richmond over Confederate monuments, he says, residents were told the statues were on federal property and could not be removed. “I was somewhat surprised by how little agency we had over the public spaces we occupy,” he stated. “Through storytelling, I desire to build a new context for understanding Reconstruction and acknowledging, especially, the role of Black and Indigenous peoples in that history.”

His solution was to 3-D scan monuments, “shrink them to a manageable size, and turn them into candles that could be melted.” He says he felt that, “by miniaturizing, multiplying, and distributing forms that were previously immobile, singular, and static, I was creating a sense of agency that was previously unattainable.”

Agency, says Williams, is about “the challenge of making things that people can touch, ‘anti-monuments’ that are temporary.”

Once he installs a waxwork, he says, “I give up ownership.” Before the Lincoln wax statue melted, someone stole one of the legs of the large piece. “I’m not disappointed if a work melts or if people take a piece of it,” says Williams, who said the leg was later returned.

In a YouTube interview, Williams says he began making and burning wax statues solely of Confederate monuments. But he says, “It felt one-sided.” In making a wax statue of Lincoln, he says, he was not trying to demean Lincoln’s contributions, but to “demythologize history” and acknowledge the sacrifices of the abolitionists and the efforts of enslaved people to free themselves that drove Lincoln and others to act.

The melted statue was preceded by a wax monument that had more than 100 wicks. They were unexpectedly lit. The replacement version had fewer wicks and was accompanied by a sign saying, “Please blow out your wick within 1-2 minutes.”

Williams was surprised the statue melted since he had selected a wax that was supposed to have a high enough congealing point that it wouldn’t melt at temperatures below 140 degrees

But he was even more shocked by the widespread coverage of the monument’s meltdown and the opportunity to talk about his art and his process.

I asked Williams how he feels life has been similar or different from his art students in Richmond.

“I’m a decade older than them. That’s both significant and not that significant. I was their age when I was in chemotherapy. But they were attending classes during COVID, which changed the dynamics and environment of education, making it harder to be a young person and a student.”

We’re watching major changes in society, says Williams. “So much is happening quickly,” with the ongoing debates over monuments, critical race theory, politics etc.  “It’s too early to say what kinds of changes will take place in social media and how my students and others will share their art.”

I don’t know how my father would have felt about a young artist deliberately melting a statue of Abraham Lincoln. I’m not even sure how I feel about that.

But I found Sandy Williams’ story, his art and his perspective inspirational. So, too, his activism includes a show raising money for the Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team, promoting non-violent conflict resolution in the neighborhoods of Richmond.

Check out this young artist.