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On April 1, 2001, Thomas Jay Warren was selected to create the statue of Sojourner Truth. In her statement to the press, Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue Committee Chair Nancy Felton said: “I am very excited about our choice. We worked very hard to select the image of Sojourner Truth that best meets the educational and artistic needs of this project. The statue will show Sojourner Truth as a mature woman, easily recognizable to schoolchildren in her role as an orator and champion of justice, freedom, and equal rights.”

Warren, who was born in Mississippi in 1958, studied sculpture as a Presidential scholar at Mississippi College, graduating with special distinction in 1979. He studied figure sculpture with renowned sculpture Andrzej Pitynski at the Johnson Atelier in New Jersey, one of the world’s largest sculpture foundries. Two years after starting his apprenticeship he was appointed head of the Modeling/Enlarging Department at this prestigious institute. For ten years he taught an international group of sculptors and apprentices techniques for modeling and enlarging the portrait and the human figure.

Currently Warren works exclusively by commission creating portraits, monuments, and memorials. Among his commissions are: the Medgar Evers Memorial in Jackson, Mississippi – a life-size bronze of the slain civil rights leader; the over life-size bronze portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Newark NJ’s City Hall; and a life-size bronze portrait of legendary Sioux spiritual leader Frank Fools Crow at Bear Butte State Park in South Dakota.

In 1992 Warren was presented with the Young Sculptors Award by the National Sculpture Society in recognition of the outstanding quality of his work. He was inducted into the National Sculpture Society in 1997. Warren lives in Rogue River, Oregon.