I was walking through Overton Square, on the back side, not far from the stage, when I came upon John Kilzer, large as life.
There was no mistaking it. It was Kilzer, all right.
Tall guy. Glasses. A peacefulness to him that’s as hard to explain as it is to miss.
“We love you and there’s nothing you can do about it,” is what he said to me.
If you stop by, he will surely speak to you, too.
Kilzer — the basketball-player-turned-English-scholar-turned-rock-star-turned-addict-turned-minister — took his own life in March 2019.
After helping thousands through his recovery ministry, Kilzer relapsed. Friends theorized that he couldn’t bear the idea that he had let so many people down.
“It was devastating,” Mary Seay Loeb said. “Suicide just leaves you in such a place of confusion, anger and sadness.
“He might have lost himself in trying to help everybody else. I really wanted to celebrate his kindness and also his humanity.”
So Loeb worked with another Memphis artist, Stephanie King, to create a mosaic portrait of Kilzer.
“Stephanie painted the likeness and I did the mosaics,” Loeb said. “We imagined him with his arms out, welcoming the broken. He’s practically a modern day saint of Midtown.”
The piece was installed a couple of weeks ago, in a space between The Art Project and 17 Berkshire.
Loeb didn’t tell anyone it was going up. People happen upon it as they go about their lives.
There is Kilzer — the likeness stops you in your tracks — but there is more to it, too. The hundreds of tiles are imperfect, just as he was imperfect, just as all of us are.
“And I love that Mary did it with mirrored tiles,” King said. “I love that you can look into that piece and see yourself in it, both physically and metaphorically.”
A group of Memphians stopped to take in the new mosaic before I left. One of them asked why Kilzer wasn’t holding a guitar. It says something about the breadth of Kilzer’s life that he could have just as easily been holding a guitar, the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book or a basketball.
“But we had to include the quote,” Loeb said. “That quote is quintessential John.”
It’s what Kilzer used to tell everyone who came to his recovery ministry: “We’re going to love you and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
So stop on by, if you’re having a low moment. And who among us hasn’t had low moments in this year of loss?
“I hope that people can visit him,” Loeb said. “I hope that people can relate to the struggle. And I hope that they then choose love.”