By Robin Miller, Arts writer

The revelation would come later, when Al Lavergne was about to leave Southern University for his new home in Kalamazoo, Mich.

The city is home to Western Michigan University, where it's really cold during the winter, but a place offering a promise.

And the promise offered to Lavergne was a studio. A big studio.

No, it was a really big studio.

"Because I like to work big," Lavergne said.

The Louisiana State Archives stands as evidence to this statement. Its facade? The five panels chronicling Louisiana's history?

Each measures 10 feet by 20 feet. And each was created by Lavergne.

 

 

 

Each of the panels is filled with symbols of Louisiana's culture and history. The fourth depicts symbols of the antebellum South through a palatial mansion, rustic cabin and southern girl in a bell-shaped dress. Gov. P.B.S. Pinchback can be seen at the center of the panel. He was governor during Reconstruction and was the only African-American to hold that office.

 

 

 

 

Al Lavergne's drawing for his fourth panel of the Louisiana State Archives building's facade shows the Americab bold eagle and Louisiana brown pelican ripping the American flag. This battle symbolizes Louisiana's succession from the United States at the beginning of the Civil War.

It's why he's visiting the Archives Building on this particular day, which happens to fall into National Archives Month.

That was in October, and the Archives featured Lavergne as a speaker, asking him to tell his story and that of the panels' creation. The auditorium was packed, and people made a point to linger at the recep tion that followed.

Everyone wanted more time to talk to Lavergne, to ask questions. He was the star, but he's the first to say he's no star.

He's just a guy whose father was a sharecropper, a kid who modeled farm animals out of clay.

He's the guy who had to be quarantined in the Lafayette Charity Hospital after contracting tuberculosis, an experience that taught him how to entertain himself.

"I was in isolation, and I learned to be alone," Lavergne said. "So, I entertained myself by drawing."

And he's the man who Southern University students used as a gauge to determine if everything was OK on schooldays. But Lavergne wouldn't leam about this reasoning until leaving for Michigan. Lavergne was an art professor at the university at the time. He had no studio or, at least, none big enough to create the kinds of sculptures that required a blow torch.

So, Lavergne moved his operation outside the art building.

"And all the students would park around where I was working," he said. "And that annoyed me."

What if one of his works fell on one of their cars? What if a stray piece of metal cracked a windshield?

The parking situation at the school was different at the time, and students could have parked elsewhere. Yet they chose to crowd out Lavergne.

"And right before I left, they told me, 'We always parked out there on purpose," Lavergne said. "They said, 'As long as you were out there working, we knew everything would be OK.' They knew they were parking in a secure place."

And the explanation gave Lavergne a different perspec- tive of the experience. In fact, he's learned a lot about hindsight.

Maybe it's his artist's perspective, or maybe it's the fact that he's also a gifted storyteller, but Lavergne easily can pinpoint small moments in his life that made a difference in the bigger picture.

And the big pictures here are those on the Archives Building. They've been the build ing's signature pieces since it opened in 1987.

OK, now's the time to start tracing his path. Remember, Lavergne grew up on a farm. It was in the southwest Louisiana community of Basille.

And remember that he modeled farm animals out of clay. His artistic talent later was discovered by an elementary school teacher, who allowed him time out of class to create homecoming decorations.

Bear in mind that such decorations are usually big in scale, and Lavergne developed a taste for working on big projects.

But then tuberculosis hit. Lavergne was in the ninth grade and couldn't return to school until he was 18 years old. Yes, he was an 18-year-old in the ninth grade, and though he was behind, he'd learned the value of working alone.

Which is probably one of the best lessons for an artist in any medium. Writers, musicians, visual artists — they'll all tell you that much of their work is solitary.

And Lavergne honed his art in that time alone, which eventually won him a full, paid scholarship to Southern University, where he worked with legendary sculptor Frank Hayden.

"I started working with metals and wood," Lavergne said. " I put it together with glue and screws, and if a dog walked by, it all fell apart."

He laughs. Yes, that really happened, and it was as frustrating an experience as trying to weld among students' cars. But it's also the reason he taught himself to weld.

"I somehow had to make the metal personal," he said. "I thought about working with bronze, but I wanted to be able to work alone — I worked alone, but I was never lonely. That was a gift. I began collecting droppings from scrap yards and welding them together. Angles started looking like arms and legs. They looked like robots, but I wanted them to have more warmth."

reception have long ended, and he now sits in a conference room, where Sailor Jackson places a new tape in a video camera.

Jackson is director of audio, film and video for the Secretary of State's Museum Division. He's recording Lavergne's story for archival purposes.

The story will be forever stored in the Archives' records, along with a recording of his speech earlier in the day, as well as photographs of Lavergne working on the five panels.

Lavergne was still a professor at Southern when he made the panels, a project about which he learned through word of mouth. He didn't know about the project's specifics; he just knew he loved history.

Besides, the project was something big in both scale and in historical impact.

"John Desmond and Donald LeMieux were the architects, and I came in to listen to them talk to see if I could put together a proposal," Lavergne said. " They wanted to actually see history greeting you."

So, Lavergne began putting his ideas together, once again looking to his own life's experiences and suddenly realizing they were entrenched in Louisiana culture and history.

Take music, for instance. It's a prominent part of Louisiana life. Though Lavergne didn't play music, he knew about it.

"Where I came from, everyone played music but me," he said. "I also knew about food. Being Cajun, we always improvised. Whatever's in the yard was what we were going to eat that night."

He also was a product of Louisiana's charity hospital system through his bout with tuberculosis.

"I had a lot of personal flavor," Lavergne said. "I was in Louisiana from day one, and when I interacted with Dr. LeMieux, he saw that I had a passion. I wanted to look at something that would speak in a formal way."

Lavergne was still working with metal sculptures at Southern. He'd even started a metal shop there. But, as with the case of most artists, he was evolving.

The panels wouldn't be metal " An artist's work is a slice of life of what he's doing at the time," Lavergne said.

But the panels are some pretty big slices, ones that required a warehouse for their creation.

Lavergne, meantime, submitted watercolors of his ideas to LeMieux, all of which were stuffed with events in Louisiana's history. The images were good but a little overwhelming and had to be whittled down to key events.

"At least my enthusiasm was showing," Lavergne said.

He laughs again.

Comic relief is plentiful in this story. Of course, he made the final cut and eventually was chosen for the job. And he admits that this was something he had to figure out as he went along.

He created the first panel, then moistened it daily while creating the second. But on completion of the second, he felt the first didn't live up to the second, so he reworked the first.

Then came the third, which required a reworking of the first and second to meet Lavergne's standards.

It's a wonder the panels were finished at all. But they were, and Lavergne had to bring them to Jackson, Miss., to be cast.

Which was an adventure in itself.

He purposely bought a truck without a bed for this job. He also connected a trailer to the back, and covered the panels with a tarpaulin, which had to be removed on stops to wet down the panels.

“W transported one panel at a time," Lavergne said. "And on one of those trips, we were stopped by the police. The truck and trailer was an ugly sight, and I know they were wondering what could they be pulling that could be so ugly."

But the result isn't ugly at all. Drive to the Archives building and take a walking tour. You'll see Louisiana's history unfold, the years connected together by the Mississippi River.

You'll meet such key Louisiana figures as LaSalle, Bienville, Iberville and DeSoto. You'll visit Fort St. Jean Baptiste de Natchitoches, which stands as the City of Natchitoches today, the Louisiana Purchase Territory's oldest settlement.

You'll travel through the Spanish Colonial period, then Louisiana's induction into the United States with the Louisiana Purchase.

"And I used the eagle as symbol of the United States and the pelican as Louisiana's state bird in the fourth panel," Lavergne said. "They're ripping apart the American flag as a sign of Louisiana's succession from the Union at the beginning of the Civil War."

The last panel ventures into contemporary Louisiana, showing modem day industry, products and universities.

Baton Rouge, New Orleans, historic buildings, symbols and personalities are sprinkled throughout these images.

"It took me two years to do this project," Lavergne said. " Artists are noted for being undisciplined, but they didn't know me. I got it done in time, and I was able to get 70 percent of what I wanted in the panels."

The project also required 12 tons of clay.

"I started out with white" clay," Lavergne said. "I thought I was going to need only four tons of clay for the whole project. But then the first panel required four tons, so I ordered more clay. I'd ordered all the white clay the place had, and they said they had calico clay. So, I ordered that."

And clay from the first panel was recycled for the fourth, then fifth.

"It was a great learning experience for me," Lavergne said.

And the result is a great history lesson for Louisianans and visitors, alike. A history of which Lavergne also is a part.

Never mind that he now lives and teaches in Michigan. Louisiana will always be home.

"And it's great to be back," he said. Back to the city where he once taught sculpture, where he welded his creations in a parking lot.

Where students knew, as long as he was there, things would always be OK.

State Archivist Florent Hardy Jr. (left), artist Al Lavergne and Secretary of State Jay Dardenne stand together in front of the Louisiana State Archives building. Dardenne and Hardy invited Lavergne to speak about the process of creating the panels.

 

click here to see the panels on facade of State Archives