JAMAICAN sculptor Basil Watson is creating a “larger-than-life-size” monument of American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr in Atlanta. It is slated for unveiling in October.

The statue will stand 18 feet in front of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium near Martin Luther King Jr Drive.

According to the Altanta Black Star newspaper, Watson — who migrated to the Georgia capital 18 years ago — called it a “great honour” to be selected from 80 other applicants. He was commissioned by the City of Atlanta.

“Martin Luther King, Jr is definitely one of the great human beings of the 20th century, and I grew up when he was in his prime, so I experienced a lot of his impact,” Watson was quoted in the article, published on Saturday, as saying.

“My father painted a portrait of [King] in 1969 when he was at Spelman (College), so there were kind of serendipitous qualities of the whole thing…It is humbling,” he continued.

Watson’s father is master artist Barrington Watson, who passed away on January 26 2016 at age 85.

The Martin Luther King Jr monument will be erected on the heels of racial tension in the United States surrounding George Floyd’s death and the removal of Confederate statues from public spaces.

Floyd, a 46-year-old black American, was killed in Minnesota on May 25 during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. A white police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost eight minutes while he was handcuffed and lying face down, begging for his life.

Floyd’s death triggered global protests against police brutality, racism and lack of accountability by law enforcement.

“The protests, the statues that are being taken down and the recognition that these statues do have a power and they were commissioned and installed because of the power that they do have, it brings a consciousness to the fact that public art that has a political message and does have power and opposition in the community,” Watson said.

Born in Atlanta, King was a Baptist minister and leader of the Civil Rights movement. In 1955, he led the Montgomery bus boycott and also helped organise the 1963 march on Washington, where he delivered his seminal ‘I Have A Dream’ speech.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. King was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968.

Watson is no stranger to projects of this magnitude. His ‘Cradle-Future in our Hands’ is on display at the Neighborhood Union Health Center in Vine City, Atlanta.

In 2017, he created a seven-foot statue of sprint legend Usain Bolt at the National Stadium in Kingston. His other works include statues of sprinters Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Merlene Ottey and Herb McKenley.

Last year, his monument of Louise “Miss Lou” Bennett-Coverley was unveiled in Gordon Town, St Andrew.

Watson was awarded the Order of Distinction (Commander Class) in 2016 by the Jamaican government.