Steve Neal has been an artist since he was young. His Heber City home is decorated with vast portraits he’s painted throughout his life — some from when he was a teenager. Scenes from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ canonized books of scripture decorate his walls, as do images he’s captured of his family and even a panoramic look at a variety of birds filling a colorful, busy rainforest scene. 

He didn’t delve into the world of sculpting until he was a student in medical school learning the intricacies of cosmetic surgery. It was then that his mentor suggested he take up the art form to help him better understand the proportions of the human face.

That was around 1984. Four decades later and retired from his career as a surgeon, he’s still bringing pots of clay to life, sculpting them into faces and bodies and scenes from the Book of Mormon as well as depictions that illustrate his patriotic feelings about the founding of the United States of America.

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Neal has long dreamed of putting his creations in a public garden, a space where people could visit to admire the work and reflect on the beliefs and emotions that inspired it.

Those dreams are coming to life in Heber City, where Neal and several of his peers in the nonprofit organization Monument of the Americas have a plot of land in the municipality’s art district. They are preparing to break ground this year.

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Shaping a hobby

Neal started sculpting to improve himself as a surgeon. To him, the practice acted as a gateway from the left side of his brain, which is responsible for analysis, logic and order, to the right, which dictates spatial awareness, emotion and creativity — a path to understanding concepts he found useful throughout his medical career.

“Left brain is what doctors are chosen for,” Neal said. “The right side of the brain is where the face lives.”

He said that when professionals chosen for the abilities of the left side of their brain try to construct faces, they often struggle.

“It really did help me,” Neal said. “I wasn’t afraid of doing rhinoplasty surgery. Didn’t have any major troubles.”

The shape of an intended face, he said, begins inside a surgeon’s head. They have to work towards it, decide what’s too much and what’s too little and ultimately produce the result born from their imagination.

“My first and second and third sculptures, they were my daughters,” he said.

Throughout his career, he continued the practice.

From surgery to scripture

When he was about a decade into his career, he came to the realization he could use his sculptures for more than just practice for his profession. In what he described as a message from God, he imagined a statue garden with his work. 

“It was a spiritual experience. It happened in the temple in Portland, Oregon,” he said. “It was a very strong, very powerful kind of experience where I actually — in my mind’s eye — could see the park, the main things about what to do, and felt it was an assignment, that was something that God was inspiring me to do.”

He took the charge seriously. Since that day, he said he’s spent thousands of hours on the project, and he remains the biggest donor for the cause.

On Dec. 31, he retired from his career as a surgeon to focus on another as an organizer and sculptor. He received a land donation for 10 acres in Heber City’s art district next to the Jordanelle Reservoir, and he’s found support from community members and volunteers in his nonprofit to help him bring the statue garden into reality. 

“We’ve got a lot of volunteers here in the valley that are helping,” Neal said. “We’ve raised at least $1.5 million from private donations to this point, and we’ll need millions more.” 

Already, Monument of the Americas is on track to collect a substantial amount. Neal said one supporter wrote the organization into his will with a potential gift of $10 million-15 million, which he plans to use as an endowment fund for the organization. 

The nonprofit’s board of directors and national advisory council — which includes former Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and his wife, Jeanette Herbert — are filled with notable individuals with careers in several state and national industries. Along with Neal, artists Michael Hall and Jerime Hooley are working on sculptures for the garden.

In the 20 years before settling in Heber City, he considered several communities to host the statue garden, though he ran into approval issues with cities and pushback from residents.

In Draper, Neal said his organization worked with the city government for two years to get them to approve a statue garden in the Traverse Mountains when a local family offered to give them seven acres.

He said Draper Mayor Troy Walker was supportive of the idea until it came time to vote for approval and he had the tie-breaking voice in the decision.

“He got up there and, without even explanation, voted against it and killed it,” Neal said. “They said it was because they didn’t want any more traffic up there.”

Karen Ashton, the creator of Thanksgiving Point, also considered hosting the garden for about two years.

“We presented a lot of the stuff we had, and they were all for it,” he said. “Karen Ashton changed her mind after we presented it.”

Neal said she thought the garden would be too big and would require its own land. 

When he considered Heber Valley, he met a different response.

“We’ve considered lots of different venues. Heber was the most vocal that they wanted it,” Neal said. “There were no naysayers.”

Eventually, Neal plans for the park to include a visitor and event center and amphitheater, along with the statues.

For God and country

The Monument of Americas park will be split into two gardens: the American Covenant Garden to feature art celebrating and depicting the founding of the United States, and the Christ in America Garden, which will depict scenes and stories from the Book of Mormon, which includes passages about Jesus Christ visiting the American continent after his resurrection.

Currently, there are 71 planned sculptures.

“There will be more than that,” Neal said. “And when I’m dead and gone, there will be other artists who will take over, qualified artists, and they will continue to put art in there. This will be unlike anything else in Utah.”

Among the planned works are 207-by-10-foot panels to show Book of Mormon stories, an 18-foot statue of Jesus Christ titled “Other Sheep I Have,” and “Title of Liberty,” a piece that depicts Book of Mormon military captain and prophet Moroni as he garners support in a fight for his country.

Neal said a larger-than-life depiction of George Washington praying at Valley Forge will have a spot in a celebratory July 4 parade this year, and later that day — outside the Stadium of Fire celebration in Provo — “Title of Liberty” will be unveiled.

“Moroni was a courageous captain, and he was trying to save his nation by rallying the people who valued freedom,” Neal said.

In the Book of Mormon story, Moroni tore his coat and wrote, “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children,” and used the fabric as a rallying cry.

Along with the backstory of Moroni’s recruitment, Neal said “Title of Liberty” will include other elements focused on the U.S. and its history and battle for freedom.

“George Washington is holding an infant, a baby, if you will, and that represents the infant republic of the United States, and it’s grasping this title,” Neal said. 

The figure in the “Statue of Freedom” statue that sits on the dome of the U.S. Capitol is also present, as are soldiers from the Civil War, World War II and Desert Storm.

“I had a patient who fought in Desert Storm, and I had her pose in her modern military uniform,” Neal said. “I took one of the figures from Mount Suribachi who was pushing up the flag on Iwo Jima in World War II, and I put him in there as well.”

Neal said the Book of Mormon contains prophecies about America and the founding of the United States.

“There are a lot of people now who are thinking that the founding of the country was flawed — the woke movement, if you will — that these guys were slaveholders and so forth and therefore somehow that disqualifies them for being able to make an ideal society. That’s crazy,” Neal said. “Everybody knows that we all have bad habits that we don’t want anybody else to know about. … We believe, through the Book of Mormon and so forth, that God inspired those men and they were raised up for that very purpose.”

Young people, he worried, “are not being schooled in the uniqueness of America, its founding or of these concepts of freedom. The history and the uniqueness of America is not taught anymore. We’re going to teach that.”