Sculptor Spotlight: Tina Allen
Tina Allen (1949-2008) was an African-American artist and sculptor. Allen created monumental bronze statues of distinguished Africans and Black Americans. She won commissions to sculpt the likenesses of figures such as Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and Sojourner Truth and her works are displayed in settings throughout the United States and abroad. Her works celebrate African concepts of beauty regarding both physical appearance and character. As Allen herself noted in an interview with Contemporary Black Biography in 1999, "I'm a conduit to express the unseen and to bring back and reposition the emphasis on the good and the great." Allen's
suffrage monument, a 12-foot-high bronze sculpture of Sojourner Truth, was installed in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1999. Truth is depicted at a lectern because she used her gift for public speaking to fight for abolition and suffrage.
Sculptor Spotlight: Meredith Bergmann
Meredith Bergmann has been making sculptures that deal with complex themes in an accessible and provocative way for over 25 years. She works on both public monuments and on a private scale, exploring issues of history, social justice, race, human rights, disabilities and the power of poetry and music. Many of the subjects of Bermann's public monuments have been women, reflecting her desire to "work for social justice and historical redress through my public art." Her largest public commission, unveiled in 2003, was for the "Boston Women's Memorial" in Boston's Back Bay but Bergmann's public monuments also include a memorial to Marian Anderson (2006) on the campus of Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina and a 2009 statue of Rosa Parks located in the U.S. Capitol. Bergmann's Women's Rights Pioneers Monument (2020) was the first monument honoring real women in New York City's Central Park.
Sculptor Spotlight: Manuelita Brown
Manuelita Brown, a California-based artist who specializes in bronze figurative and portrait sculpture, has completed many private, corporate and public commissions during her second career as a sculptor. Her statue of suffragist
Sojourner Truth, located on the University of California, San Diego campus, demonstrates her preference for life-sized,rather than monumental, statues of remarkable people. Installed in 2015, Brown observed that "Sojourner Truth serves as a drum major for social justice, equity and voting rights." She further noted that the scale of her statues are designed to help viewers relate to the humanity of her subjects as well "to convey the strength, character and beauty of her own people, the descendants of the African survivors in the Americas."
Sculptor Spotlight: Jane DeDecker
Jane DeDecker has been sculpting the human figure for over thirty-five years and has placed over 175 life and monumental sized public sculptures in over thirty-three states. Many of DeDecker's public installations honor women, including "Harriet Tubman" at the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, "Emily Dickinson" at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C. and "Amelia Earhart" at the Earhart Elementary School in Oakland, California. In December 2020, the United States Congress passed HR 473, authorizing a national women's suffrage monument. DeDecker has been commissioned to create this monument, which she has christened
Every Word We Utter. The maquette of DeDecker's proposed national monument was installed in Little Rock in 2019.
Sculptor Spotlight: Barbara Grygutis
Barbara Grygutis creates public spaces that enhance the built environment, enable civic interaction, and reveal unpsoken relationships between nature and humanity. She has been commissioned to create over 75 large-scale works of public art throughout North America and her work has been exhibited at The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.; the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York; the Bronx Museum in New York City; and the Vice-President's Residence and the White House, both in Washington, D.C. Gruygutis's 2020 suffrage monument Stand commemorates the women suffragists who fought for the passage of the 19th Amendment. Located in downtown Lexington, Kentucky, the artwork serves as the first public sculpture to honor historic women in the city.
Sculptor Spotlight: Alan Lequire
Alan Lequire is a sculptor who has become well-known for his public commissions and sensitive portraiture. He works in virtually all sculpture materials, both direct carving and clay sculpting to be cast in bronze. He believes that the human figure is the single artistic subject to which all viewers inevitably respond. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, thus making it part of the U.S. Constitution and Lequire created both of Tennessee's suffrage memorials. In 2006, LeQuire created a sculptural group of life-size portraits of Tennessee women's suffrage activists Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Lizzie Crozier French. The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial was installed in Market Square in downtown Knoxville. LeQuire also created the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument(2016), which is located in downtown Nashville and was re-dedicated in 2020, the centennial of women's suffrage.