Background
Taft Richardson Junior. was born on September 2, 1943 in Lumberton, Florida, to Taft Richardson Senior and Mary Lee Turner Richardson.
Taft Richardson Junior. was born on September 2, 1943 in Lumberton, Florida, to Taft Richardson Senior and Mary Lee Turner Richardson.
He attended his early school years in a church owned by his relatives.
Taft enjoyed creating sculptured images from bones like spiders, snakes and maps. He made an image of the continent of Africa out of tiny pieces bone fragments. Taft often said that he did not just create art for just viewing but he also for spiritual and religious reasons.
People often say after viewing his art pieces they get a feeling of inspiration.
One of his famous pieces once stood at 82 inches tall. lieutenant looked like a giant snake dressed in armor.
He called it the King James version in the bible, "Abaddon". Foreign more than 40 years during Richardson"s life, he created art that amazed his audiences and captured their imagination.
At the age of seven, he was baptized at Spring Hill Missionary Baptist Church.
He later attended and graduated from a segregated all-black high school. lieutenant was said that Taft one day was sitting down at the dinner table eating a steak and some chicken wings and when he had finished, he looked down at his plate and saw the bones laying. He pick up the bones and made a different designs out of them on the table top next to his plate.
He transformed them into different images.
He subsequently began collecting more bones from different animals and made them into art sculptures. In 1967, Taft left his family in Florida and moved to Washington District of Columbia to pursue his art career.
He got his first job working at General Hospital. At Howard University he worked and studied Nuclear Medicine.
Taft, then a young man in his twenties, spent a great deal of his leisure time in the night life at bars and night clubs on U Street in Northwest District of Columbia. He mingled with artists, politicians, activists and popular celebrities visiting town.
lieutenant was in this popular area of Washington District of Columbia that Taft began to display his art work to the public, on busy city street corners and in neighborhood parks. In the early 1970s Taft took his art creation on tour. He traveled around the United States from east to west doing art galleries from New York City to the state of California.
Everywhere he went people were amazed to see the sculptures he made out of animal bones.
He appeared regularly on television shows and he has been written about in dozens of newspaper articles around the world. In the Tampa Tribune newspaper the whole LifeStyle section was dedicated to him.
In 2007 Taft became illinois He continued working on his last piece of art until his death in November 2008.
He considered himself an activist.
Taft said, "one of my best inspirational person was a famous artist named Paul Goodnight known for his 1980 painting, "Endangered Species". Taft said This painting always touches me deep in my heart.