Senator Richard Russell, all 14 feet of him, is standing alone in an abandoned Athens factory.

Sculptor William Thompson has been working on the monument for more than a year, and the full-scale clay model is complete. It will be another six months before the finished bronze statue is placed on the capitol grounds in Atlanta.

The work began as an idea in Professor Thompson’s mind, and he has turned it into a reality.

Recognition, acclaim and a series of commissions have been coming his way lately. He and the Russell statue have been the subject of several newspaper articles, and almost everyone in Athens has some opinion about what is going on in the old factory down by the Oconee river.

William Thompson is accepted now. It’s obvious to everyone that he knows what he is doing. There was a time, however, when he was the only one who knew.

At age 13 he suffered from scarlet fever. During the weeks he was in bed, he read some books on the life and works of Michelangelo, and the future was immediately clear.

Soap and wood were his first materials. Today it is clay cast into plaster cast into bronze.

Art is a highly personal and spiritual experience for William Thompson. “I can’t separate my spiritual life and my artistic life,” he explains. “For me they overlap; art is a spiritual state of mind. Without spirit it loses its vitality and magic.”

The latest challenge to come his way is the Andersonville monument.

The Andersonville prison was a Civil War military prison northeast of Americus, Georgia. It was hastily built in February 1864 when it became apparent that large numbers of Union prisoners could no longer be held in Richmond Virginia. Overcrowding and alleged cruelty made it one of the most infamous prisons in the history of warfare. “Millions of flies swarmed over everything and covered the faces of the sleeping prisoners, crawled down their open mouths and deposited maggots upon the gangrenous wounds of the living and the mouths of the dead.” Such were the conditions of the prison hospital as described by a surgeon stationed there.

Built to contain 10,000 men and later enlarged to accommodate 5,000 more, during most of the time the prison was in existence more than twice that number were crowded inside the 26-acre corral. In the summer of 1864 the number totaled 32,899.

There are 12,912 marked graves in the National Cemetery at Andersonville and estimates place the number of deaths at a much higher figure.

The site of the prison is now under the protection of the National Parks Service.

Plans call for monuments to be erected by each of the 50 states.

The state of Georgia recently held a competition to determine who would produce its monument Sculptors from all over the state were involved and Thompson was the winner.

His work will feature the figures of three wounded men leaning on each other for support. “This will be a monument to prisoners of all wars,” Thompson states. “It speaks of the courage and strength and faith of these men fighting for their survival.”

“They are determined to keep their dignity.”

Mr. Thompson is a parishioner at St. Joseph’s in Athens and is an art professor at the University of Georgia. “Producing art is a godlike experience: taking it from an idea to the final piece, from nothingness to its final state.” William Thompson speaks with the authority of a man who knows what he is about. His art is his life and he puts both into his work