The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs’ Public Art Program is pleased to announce the installation of new works by artist Li Hardison along Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. The dedication toke place on Thursday, April 20, 2006, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in conjunction with the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the recently renovated boulevard, hosted by Denver Parks & Recreation and Denver Public Works.

For this project, artist Li Hardison molded from clay and cast in bronze a portrait of Dr. King using the bas relief technique. Replications of this same portrait will be installed on 26 decorative planters, 10"x10" in size, along a three-mile corridor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., between Colorado Blvd. and Quebec St. In addition, four replications, 12"x12" in size, will be installed on two feature walls at each end of the three-mile strip.

Li Hardison was raised in Newark, New Jersey, however she is a native of Harlem, New York. As a child, she spent a significant amount of time with her aunt, a sculptor, at her home studio in New York. She grew up watching her aunt work on pieces and sculpt portraits. At 17, she successfully sculpted a portrait of someone she did not know using clay her aunt had given her years before. The experience informed her that her intuition was correct and in fact she was an artist. However, she chose to ignore the idea of pursuing art seriously until her late 30s. She could not afford to go to art school, so she applied for and accepted a job at a bronze casting foundry. It was there that she found a mentor, Paul Moore, who shared his knowledge and skill with her, believed in her, and encouraged her as an artist.

Li Hardison is a figurative sculptor and portrait artist. She describes her passion for studying and rendering the human form as that which sustains her psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. Her works are made of clay, cast in bronze. She has been inspired and influenced by the figurative works of ancient Greece, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Richard Barthe, Augusta Savage and Malvina Hoffman, to name a few.