Ed Hamilton's Sculpted Life

On a warm April afternoon in 1973, Ed Hamilton, sporting a large Afro, steered his puttering beige Volkswagen Beetle down a stretch of Frankfort Avenue crossed by railroad tracks. Hamilton had to pick up blocks of clay at a shop for his students at Iroquois High School, where he was helping to teach ceramics and sculpture.

Cast in Bronze: An Artist's Legacy

The ongoing debate over whether to remove Confederate statues in the South (and beyond) demonstrates how public art highlights what a society finds significant. By that measure, Ed Hamilton was pretty insignificant when he was growing up black in the 1950s and 1960s. All the public art he saw around him in his hometown of Louisville, Ky.

Creating statue of Julius Chambers for Charlotte's Trail of History | Charlotte Observer

Five years after Julius Chambers died, large photographs of the renowned Charlotte civil rights attorney hang in an artist's studio in Louisville, Ky. How do you capture a man and his legacy? Sculptor Ed Hamilton stares at the photographs, searching for an answer.