The Abridged version:
- A second art piece is coming to the Johnny Cash Trail, with a 6.5-foot bronze statue of Johnny Cash performing at Folsom State Prison.
- Sacramento-based sculptor Adan Romo is designing all eight pieces for the art walk. Romo was also a longtime teacher at St. Francis High School.
- The new bronze statue and a small parklet are expected to be finished in 11 months.
More artwork celebrating the legacy of Johnny Cash is coming to Folsom.
The Folsom City Council greenlit funding for a new sculpture for the city’s Johnny Cash Trail on Tuesday.
The statue is the second piece among a total of eight art installations planned for the trail.
The Johnny Cash Trail, a 2.75-mile bike and pedestrian trail that connects Folsom’s historic downtown to trails at Folsom Lake, opened in 2017. The trail traverses the boundaries of Folsom State Prison.
Since the trail’s debut, efforts have been underway to create an art walk theme around Johnny Cash’s music and legacy. The first piece, a seven-foot tall brass guitar pick, was installed in November 2024.
New piece titled ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash’
An old photograph of Johnny Cash performing at Folsom State Prison in 1968 inspired the sculptor’s design, a 6.5-foot bronze statue of the Man in Black. The photo shows Cash with a guitar on his knee and his stool pulled up just a couple feet from the prison inmates.
“His whole thing was trying to be amongst inmates as much as possible, as a peer would,” Romo said. “I wanted to recreate that intimacy.”
The full piece will eventually stand near the Johnny Cash Bridge that stretches over Folsom Lake Crossing. Plans also include a small parklet with benches that will surround the piece. The city has designated $425,000 in state grant funds towards the installation.
Romo said didn’t know much about Cash before designing the art walk, but during his research found that he related to Cash’s roots growing up on a farm in Arkansas. It made Romo think of his own family’s history as farmers from Mexico.
“He aspired to something greater. As an artist you cannot help but be inspired by someone who’s against all odds,” Romo said.
Romo is the artist behind all eight pieces planned for the Johnny Cash Trail. He’s a longtime local artist, now retired after a 26-year teaching career at St. Francis High school, where he led the school’s visual art program. He now sculpts full-time from his Midtown Sacramento art studio.
Statue will take 11 months to make
Romo woke up on Wednesday morning to the news that his sculpture finally had received more funding, and immediately knew it was time to get to work.
“Eleven months is actually extremely fast to turn around this kind of work,” Romo said.
Over the course of the coming months Romo said he’ll finalize the design and create a maquette, or a miniature mock-up of the statue. That design will then be enlarged to it’s full size and handcrafted out of clay. From there, the sculpture is crafted into a mold, that eventually gets filled with cement.
The piece will go to a foundry in Berkeley to be cast in molten bronze, Romo said.
While Romo is the lead artist, he said that about 13 people will likely play a role in completing the statue.
“Sometimes public art projects, they happen too fast,” Romo said. “This project as a whole we’re 10 years into it. It will probably be another eight years to finish all of them. It’s nice to have that time to digest it and tell the story correctly.”
The city of Folsom does not have a timeline for the six remaining pieces. They will be installed as funding becomes available, said city spokesperson Christine Brainerd.
The city is seeking both grant funding and private sponsorship to finish the art trail.
Felicia Alvarez is a reporter at Abridged covering accountability. She’s called Sacramento home since 2015 and has reported on government, health care and breaking news topics for both local and national news outlets.