Inge Hardison
1914-2016
Portrait Bust of Norbert Rillieux
1967
from the Old Taylor Series, Ingenious Americans
painted plaster
8-7/8 x 5 x 5 inches
signed

Rillieux was a Louisiana Creole inventor and chemical engineer. His invention revolutionized sugar processing.

Hardison studied at Tennessee State A & I, the Art Students League (NY), and Vassar College. She worked in the theater and as a fine artist, primarily devoted to photography and sculpture. One of Hardison’s best-known images is a sculpture of Sojourner Truth (1990), a gift given by NY Governor Cuomo to President Nelson Mandela.

“Sculpture woke up again in the ‘60s. While teaching in a Freedom School in Harlem, I became reacquainted with the towering bravery and the deep commitment to freedom and justice of our black foreparents, and was moved to begin an ongoing series of sculptured portraits I called Negro Giants in History. In the ‘70s, I received my first public commission from Old Taylor Whiskies to do the Ingenious Americans, nine sculpted portraits of little-known black scientists and inventors, for a nationwide promotion.”

(REF: Gumbo Ya Ya, An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Women Artists, intro by Leslie King-Hammond, 1995)

original finish with some losses