By Danielle Smith

Leader Staff Writer

Oxford resident Jeff Morrison has been a graphic artist for over 30 years and one project he started four years ago, is finally

paying off.

Morrison, author of “Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City,” recently found out that he is one of three winners for the State History Award in the category of Books: University & Commercial Press.

“It was really exciting (to be recognized),” Morrison said. “After the phone call, I was smiling for the rest of the day . . . It was nice to hear that I had won that award and that my book had won that award and that I was being recognized in that way.”

“Guardians of Detroit” takes viewers on a journey exploring different historic buildings in the Motor City, while highlighting details that one would not notice while walking the streets below. Statues of gargoyles, grotesques, griffins and the like are plentiful throughout the city, if you are looking in the right direction.

“I was aware of about a handful of buildings and I started going to those buildings to take pictures and document them,” Morrison said.

As he visited these buildings, Morrison noticed that there were more architectural sculptures throughout the city than what he had initially thought.

“I thought maybe I’d get 100 pages or so, and I started working on it and ended up with about 350 pages that I turned into the publisher,” Morrison said.

Architectural sculpture is something that Morrison has always been fascinated with. He said, “a couple of years ago, (I) had taken some pictures and was looking at them and was thinking, ‘maybe I could put something together that people might be interested in.’”

As the number of photos grew, Morrison had to figure out how he wanted to share this aspect of Detroit’s past.

“I was trying to emphasise the most unique photos and also within each building,” he said. “I was trying to show some of the relationships between the different pieces of sculpture and how they all work together and (how) they complemented each other to work as a whole.”

The era in which these historic buildings were built was during the Gothic and Victorian revival as well as a few others, according to Morrison. “It was at a time when there was a building boom going on in Detroit from about the 1850s on into the 1930s and at that time, the main architectural styles called for a lot of architectural sculpture,” he said.

Detroit has seen many changes throughout its 318 year history and Morrison is glad to still see glimpses of the old city. “It was nice to see so much left behind…there is a pretty strong historical preservation movement in the city of Detroit,” he said.

While Morrison photographed many buildings, one in particular stood out to him: Trinity Episcopal Church, which made it to the front cover of the book.

“I don’t know if it’s the most fascinating, but it does have a ton of sculpture on it and to me, it is the epitome of architectural sculpture because it has so many different gargoyles and faces and carvings on it; it’s really incredible,” Morrison said.,

Morrison started taking photographs for his book in 2015. Two years and 770 photos later, he handed over his work to the Wayne State University Press, which published the book.

Morrison will be presented with the State History Award on Friday, Sept. 27 at the Michigan History Conference in Ludington. However, this award is not the end for Morrison.

He is currently working on a new project: “Guardians of Michigan.” Morrison said, “‘Guardians of Detroit’ concentrates on architectural sculpture just within the city limits of Detroit and ‘Guardians of Michigan’ will tell the rest of the story and include architectural sculpture throughout the state of Michigan.”

Morrison welcomes anyone to reach out and nominate a certain building to be included in the new book. He can be reached at guardiansofdetroit@gmail.com.

Guardians of Detroit: Architectural Sculpture in the Motor City can be purchased anywhere books are sold or through Morrison’s website, guardiansofdetroit.com.