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Ground Broken for Monumental Book of Mormon Sculpture Park

As reported in Meridian Magazine


We can lose our way, forget who we are and what we’ve learned, without a place to remember. Yet creating these places of memory that draw us and solidify us take just the right confluence of people, passion and events.


That’s what happened last week when ground was broken on a bright morning in Heber, Utah, on a massive new 12-acre sculpture park, called the Monument of the Americas. This will be a park with two major gardens. The first is a Christ in America Garden, featuring scenes and insights from the Book of Mormon, depicting the Savior’s visit, and the American Covenant Garden, which features sculptures that tell the story of a promised land.


The 12-acre park will be on a hillside with a stunning view of green, stretching fields of a valley with Mt. Timpanogos rising behind. The hope is that those who come and see the 70 statues and sculpted panels will be strengthened, refortified and moved. Europe has its great statue parks that blend art and nature, but this new Monument of the Americas will be a unique statement about the love of Jesus Christ for all the world and the covenants upon the promised land.


The idea began with one man, Steven Lloyd Neal, who did not know he was a sculptor. He was an artist who had painted many scenes from the Book of Mormon, including large murals, but he was also a medical student studying plastic surgery. His professor told him that if he really wanted to learn how to do facial plastic surgery, he should take up sculpting, and so he did.


Then one day in the temple, he had an experience that transformed his life. He understood that he was to create a sculpture park dedicated to the Book of Mormon. He said, “There never was a time when I wasn’t imaging up some creative artwork, the memories extending back to my earliest recollection. But this work exceeded my imagination: it was given to me in a special spiritual experience. I was born to do this.”


So, well more than 30 years ago he began the creation of statues for this park he envisioned. It was endless, constant work and vision. It was one man alone in an art studio—and then others began to join like sculptor Michael Hall, who took up the idea 20 years ago and began sculpting the panels. It was donors and dreamers.


There was only one catch. This magnificent park began to have sculptures a plenty in maquette size, and then some were enlarged to heroic proportions, but it had no home. No dirt, no soil, no grass or trees for viewers to plant their feet on. It wasn’t because Neal and his supporters weren’t trying. They were exploring actively.John Hewlett, board member and founder of the park, described a part of the process. He said, “We meandered all over the place. We had all kinds of challenges.”


Many locations were considered, but it was important to find a place with enough acreage to support a park; land that was stunningly beautiful, but affordable; central access for attendees to come easily to the park; and, most challenging of all, a supportive city council. This is not an easy combination.


They considered the Los Angeles basin, Nauvoo, Thanksgiving Point.


Neal kept creating remarkable sculptures in his studio with the faith that somehow this would all work out and a place would be found. It was decades of faith on the line, but Neal had made a covenant with the Lord and he would do everything possible to keep it.

“I made a promise to God:  if he would bless my talents, I’d just keep at it, never knowing if this would happen.”


One area after another was considered, studied and then didn’t work out. A beautiful piece of land on the top of Traverse Mountain had been offered as a place for the park, but the Draper, Utah city council turned it down. The problem? The park was too religious. And, of course, if you can’t get a religious park past a city council in Utah, where could it ever find its home?


Finally, Neal and his supporters turned their eyes toward Heber. Hewlett said, “We found a great parcel of land. It was irregular in size the county commissioners would not approve it. After the last commission meeting, we were discouraged, but then Hewlett drove up Main Street and saw a little “For Sale” sign on a fence on a lovely piece of property. The Monument of the America’s Foundation purchased the 7acres, thinking they would just have to scale the park back.


Then a miracle happened. The Sorenson Foundation, seeing the extraordinary worth of this park to the community, offered 12 acres for the park on a Heber hillside, and there it will stand for generations to come. It will be a witness to those who follow that we knew. It will bear testimony of lives lived in heroic and deeply spiritual ways and most of all that Christ lives and his covenant is on this land.


At the groundbreaking, Gordon Smith, former senator from Oregon, said, “We stand on the threshold of a project that is more than stone and bronze, more than shapes and lines. This is the unfolding of a vision, a heavenly gift, a labor of love and a testimony born from the heart of an artist whose life has been dedicated to the master artist himself, even the Lord Jesus Christ.”


He added, “Dr. Neal’s hands have healed bodies in the operating room, and no they shape souls.”


One Park, Two Gardens

The Christ in America Garden will focus on Book of Mormon events culminating in Christ’s visit to the Americas. A commanding 18-foot statue of Christ will stand upon a waterfall, where the streams crash over the gold plates. This is called the “Other Sheep I Have” monument.


In another place, King Benjamin stands upon his tower, dramatically addressing all of us as his audience.


The statue called “The Title of Liberty” is a crowd favorite, with Moroni hoisting the banner as he stands on the dragon of tyranny, surrounded by others who were foundational to America’s freedom.


The story of the scripture unfolds dramatically through 20 10’ by 7’ sculpted panels, featuring such scenes as Lehi’s journey across the sea, Christ blessing the children and much more.


The American Covenant Garden will focus on the freedom and liberty God grants a promised land and the people in small and large ways who stood up to make that a reality. The sculptures for this garden are being sculpted largely by Jerime Hooley.


Visitors’ Center

The park will be laid out with a neo-classical Visitor and Events Center with event space, classrooms, café and gift shop, as well as a Charitable Arts Theater and High Valley Arts Amphitheater to host summer musicals, plays and productions.


Former Utah governor Gary Herbert, who spoke at the event, talked about why it is so important to remember those who founded this nation. He said that he had visited troops in the Middle East once and had met a wounded soldier, who spoke no English and was not American, but had fought with the American troops. He tried to understand why the man had made this choice at great cost to himself on his long plane trip home. He came to realize in a more perfect way that people aren’t attracted to America because it has the biggest army, the biggest military or the biggest bombs. People are attracted because they yearn for freedom and liberty, coupled with individual responsibility. They want to be the best they can be, unleash their potential and it is only freedom that nurtures that.


It is clear that this park is named Monument of the Americas for a good reason. It celebrates Jesus Christ, covenant Israel in America, and the baton picked up to carry freedom forward by every generation that believes. When the park is finished, it will be a place to visit, find peace, lift your eyes, and remember.


The groundbreaking has passed, now real work still lies ahead. Steven Lloyd Neal is confident that it will take way less time than it has already taken to see the completion of the park! He looks to see the park established in about three years.

 
 
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