Downtown art plays triple role as sculpture, bike rack and monument to black history
As motorists enter downtown from the Main Street Bridge, they will be greeted by a sculpture that spells out DUUUVAL – a rallying cry that resounds throughout the Jaguars stadium during football season but originates from the local hip hop scene of the ‘90s.
The sculpture, entitled “Changing Perspective,” is the only perspectival word-based bike rack sculpture in the U.S. or elsewhere. It is comprised of 11 separate bike racks that merge together to spell DUUUVAL, and on the flip side of each rack are arrows pointing to sites of cultural and historical significance to the black community in Jacksonville as well as a synopsis describing those sites.
The Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville (CCGJ) unveiled the sculpture July 12 on the east sidewalk at 15 N. Ocean St. Two of the three artists, Eric Moed and his wife, Caila Moed – a Jacksonville native – were present to describe the creative process that led to the completion of the 5-foot-6-inch high by 30-foot long sculpture.
Eric graduated from Harvard with a master’s degree in design studies, and Caila, a former professional dancer, will be pursuing her MBA at Oxford this fall. The Moeds are practicing Jews, which, they say, helps them relate to the black community because both groups have long been on the same page when it comes to civil rights. The third artist is Samuel Maddox, who holds a master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
The trio submitted a proposal for the project, which had an $8,000 budget, and were selected from among 144 applicants. The CCGJ runs the Art in Public Places program for the city and managed the project from beginning to end. The sculpture was sponsored by the Downtown Investment Authority (DIA) as part of its Urban Arts Project, with additional support from the Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA). The sculpture was fabricated and installed by David Main of Main Made Studios.
The three artists were inspired to shift their work on the project toward visual storytelling when leaders of the black community expressed concern over the lack of representation of black history in Jacksonville’s public spaces at a town hall meeting held last July at the downtown public library to discuss the recent phase of new public art projects downtown.
“What we’ve done here is both reclaim the term ‘Duuuval’ as something that came out of the black community in Jacksonville and was spread by local DJs, and we’ve also reclaimed the history of this area. It’s a historically black neighborhood and that is Jacksonville’s history and that is America’s history – it’s not just black history,” said Caila.
Christopher White, a Jacksonville-based musician, was one of the attendees at the meeting last July. The suggestions and important information he shared with the artists at the meeting greatly contributed to the plans for the final product, according to Caila.
Carlton Maddox, who lives and works in Springfield, was the first person to hitch his bicycle to the new rack. A former high school classmate of Caila Moed, Carlton hosted the couple while they worked on the project. He is familiar with the greatly untold stories and the sites related to African American history and was happy with the outcome of the sculpture. “Ocean Street is a heavily traveled thoroughfare, and this gives a very visible cue to the cultural contribution of black people in Jacksonville.”
Eric Moed highlighted the importance of hearing what the people in the community had to say as the first step in the creative and design process. “Before we put pen to paper for the design, we wanted to make sure it was something context-specific and sensitive to what the public in Jacksonville actually wanted. We take the idea of public art being ‘public’ very seriously,” he said. “At the town hall meeting, many people spoke up and said we are struggling to find an identity for the city of Jacksonville, and some other people in the crowd – members of the black community – stated they wanted to start a dialogue about the rich African American history and culture in Jacksonville because it’s ever-present but not represented in public.
“We worked with the community to come up with the concept – it’s a hybrid of a bike rack, a sculpture and a monument – and we identified 11 sites of cultural and historical significance to the black community in Jacksonville,” Moed continued. “We united them under the banner of DUUUVAL, which can be viewed from certain perspectives around the intersection here. It’s really great that everyone says ‘DUUUVAL’ – it’s nice that it unifies everyone, but we should also recognize the origin.”
By Kandace Lankford
Resident Community News
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading... 
