LIBERTY SCULPTURE PARK

By John Wease

AS A RESIDENT OF NEWBERRY SPRINGS, I must make many trips to Barstow, Victorville or “down below” to buy, well, just about everything. I had driven past the Liberty Sculpture Park along the Interstate 15 countless times before I finally stopped in to check it out. The sculptures are quite noticeable from the interstate due to their large size. Up close, they are amazingly detailed and more than a little bit disturbing. All of the art is related to the general theme of fighting for democracy and commemorating the victims of communist oppression.

The Sculpture Park is a nongovernmental nonprofit located at 37570 Yermo Road, in Yermo. The thirty-six acres site is largely undeveloped desert with a meandering dirt road that leads to the sculptures along the freeway. And, the art is placed along the freeway to get maximum exposure. With a daily average of 35,000 cars crossing the border into Nevada on the Interstate 15, that’s a lot of exposure.

The first sculpture was placed in 2017 and titled “The Origin of Freedom Number One”. It is a fifteen feet high head of Chief Crazy Horse, the famous Lakota Sioux war chief. It was placed on the 140th anniversary of his death in 1877. A brilliant war strategist, he was finally captured and bayoneted by a guard, reportedly for resisting being placed in a stockade cell.

In 2019, the giant 64 sculpture appeared. There was a lot of talk about what “64” could possibly mean. As it turned out, the 30-foot tall 64 represents June 4th, 1989, the date of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, China. The base has a relief depicting the clash between the Chinese army and the protestors. In April that year, protestors started gathering in Tiananmen Square and other locations. Mostly university students and factory workers. The Chinese government finally, in the early hours of June 4th, ordered the army to clear the demonstrators from the square. The government, if mentioning the event at all, refers to it as the “June 4th clearing” or the “June 4th event”. It was, technically, a clearing. The square was cleared with the use of automatic rifles and tanks. The number of dead and injured is unknown but, it is believed the deaths were in the hundreds and injuries in the thousands.

“Tank Man” was placed the same year. It is a life-sized depiction of the iconic photograph by AP reporter Jeff Widener, shot from his hotel balcony and smuggled out of China. The photograph captured the image of an unidentified man with a brief case, standing in front of a column of tanks, leaving Tiananmen Square June 5th. He was never identified and it is unknown if he was ever punished. Many of the protestors were imprisoned. The protest leader that served the longest sentence was Li Wangyang, a labor rights activist.

The sculpture honoring Li Wangyang was the next one created, and shows him defiantly standing, arms in chains. He served twenty-one years in prison for counter-revolutionary propaganda, incitement, and subversion. When released from prison, he was nearly blind, deaf, and in very poor health due to the years of torture he had experienced. About a year after his release, he was interviewed by Hong Kong’s iCable television. He voiced continued support for the Tiananmen Square protests and democracy for China. He was found hanged in a hospital room soon after. At first it was reported as a suicide, but later it was changed to accidental death. I suppose there are many ways to die in a hospital. Accidental death by hanging by a bed sheet from a hospital window doesn’t seem very likely. His death sparked large protests in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong sculpture was created in 2020 and shows umbrella wielding protestors in conflict with the police. Beginning in 2014, pro-democracy protestors, carrying yellow umbrellas as a shield against the pepper spray used by the police, occupied the city for seventy-five days. This protest by thousands became known as the Umbrella Revolution or Umbrella Movement. More recent protestors could also be seen using umbrellas.

The most controversial sculpture is the CCP Covid II. CCP, of course, stands for Chinese Communist Party. The original artwork was placed in June 2021 and was made of resin. It depicted the face of President Xi with Covid molecule spikes. One month later, it was destroyed by fire. The artist was scoffed at when he insisted it was burned by CCP agents. He rebuilt it using steel and concrete. He was contacted during reconstruction by a man that claimed to represent a Jewish organization in New York that wanted a monument built. He requested a lot of detailed information on how the CCP Covid II was being built and asked for step-by-step photos. This man was arrested soon after in Florida along with other CCP agents. The burnt remains of CCP Covid I rest next to the replacement. Perhaps as a stark representation of the fight for freedom.

The artist and creator of these amazing sculptures is a gentleman named Weiming Chen. He is every bit as interesting as his art. I recently learned that he was a friend of a new friend of mine and asked her if she could possibly contact him to see if I could interview him. She called him, and a few hours later my wife and I were sipping green tea with him in his living room. Or the living room of the house in Newberry Springs where his studio is.

Mr. Chen, and yes, Chen is his surname. On the signage at the Sculpture Park his name is listed as Weiming Chen in some places and Chen Weiming in others. In China, it would be Chen Weiming, but he has Americanized the order of the names. I do not know what I expected, but Mr. Chen is one of the most amiable persons I have ever met. He was working on his latest work, “Swimming to Freedom,” when we arrived. Commemorating the “Freedom Swimmers” that swam from mainland China to Hong Kong during the anti-capitalism purge known as the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. It was amazing to see the massive structure of steel with many castcement individual pieces all numbered to know where to place them. I would love to see how they move it the nine miles to the Sculpture Park once it is all mortared and finished.

Mr. Chen immigrated from mainland China to New Zealand in 1988 and became a citizen there. He could have lived a peaceful life as a talented, conventional artist. Living in a free country, he was finally able to see world news. World news, that is, not censored or controlled by the CCP. Tiananmen Square affected him deeply and changed his art focus to democracy and freedom for the victims of communism everywhere. A true believer, he went to Syria to fight alongside of the Free Syrian Army from 2012-2014, fighting with the pro-democracy revolutionary forces against the Russia backed al-Assad regime.

Mr. Chen became a U.S. legal resident and moved here to expand his audience. With New Zealand, population around five million, and California, thirty-nine million, I guess he did. Mr. Chen is going through the permit hurdles now to build a museum at the Liberty Sculpture Park. Two five thousand square foot buildings, one for art, one for historical photos and other information, will hopefully begin construction soon. An art museum would be a nice addition out here, in this end of the High Desert. For now, the Sculpture Park is open every day, and there is no charge to enter. Exit at Calico Road and turn toward Yermo. Turn right at Yermo Road and look for the entrance on the right. There is a nice pavilion that would be a great place for a picnic or just to relax. Maybe we will see you there.