Bicentennial busts honor and celebrate Thomas Jefferson in Jefferson Parish

JEFFERSON PARISH, La. (WGNO) — Jefferson Parish continues to celebrate its Bicentennial, and at Jefferson Parish East Bank Regional Library they are doing so by making busts of Thomas Jefferson.

They’re celebrating the bicentennial through honoring the third President of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson.

“One of the many ways we as a library have participated in the bicentennial is we had our Maker team put together a lovely bust,” said Jessica Styons, Library Director at Jefferson Parish Library.

Styons went on to say, “A little fun fact is that Jefferson was still alive when Jefferson Parish came into being 200 years ago, so this is a fun way of honoring him.

They’ve been selling the Thomas Jefferson busts and encourage the community to decorate them with the “Show Us Your Busts” program.

Shannon Kitchens is the Makerspace Librarian and along with her team they worked hard to make the 18-inch busts.

“The exterior part is a mother mold and what it does is holds the silicone together when casting, and when you open it up, you can see the base and the bicentennial logo,” said Kitchens. “Then we lock him up real good, and we bungee the mold closed.”

Kitchens continued to explain the process of making the busts.

“We then use a material, a resin plastic and we pour it in and then we honestly sit there and turn him like a rotisserie chicken, making sure that we get all the crevices,” Kitchens said. “It takes 45 minutes to get him turned and then another two and a half hours for him to cure.”

Jefferson Parish Library currently has a limited supply left of the busts and they are selling them for $100 each.

In November, Jefferson Parish Library celebrated its own milestone, its 75th anniversary.

Thomas Jefferson was president when the United States bought the Louisiana territory from France in 1803.

Latest Posts