MASTER SCULPTOR SABIN HOWARD PLAYS FORWARD RENAISSANCE ART TO CELEBRATE THE AMERICAN EVERYMAN

Master sculptor Sabin Howard designed, created, and sculpted A Soldier’s Journey, the heart of the National WWI Memorial to be installed in Washington, DC

KENT, CT, UNITED STATES, August 5, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Master sculptor Sabin Howard designed, created, and sculpted A Soldier’s Journey, the sculptural heart of the National WWI Memorial to be installed in Washington, DC next month.

The National WWI Memorial is meant to honor the 4.8 million American men and women who mobilized, and the 116,516 who died, in the Great War, as well as to teach viewers about this war of a hundred years ago.

Commissioned to create the relief that is its centerpiece, Howard designed and sculpted a magnificent story told by 38 masterful figures: men, women, and children who viscerally show the experience of the War to End All Wars on soldiers, their families, and battlefield nurses.

Initially, Howard endured an arduous committee process where, he says wryly, “All these DC types, who had become sculpture experts overnight, were telling me what to do.” He quickly realized that uplifting, inspiring, and educating viewers required him to hold fast to his singular artistic vision.

Howard stood in his studio in front of the poster of The Last Judgement and heard an internal voice say, “Do what you know.”

What Howard knows is classical and Renaissance Art. His education at the Philadelphia College of Art and at the New York Academy of Art, along with 35,000 hours spent in the studio sculpting from life, has endowed him with a mastery of the art of figure sculpting. The countless hours he spent studying Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael has imprinted him with a design and composition sense unseen since the Renaissance.

Howard went to work with models in original WWI uniforms that had seen battle. He had a nurse’s dress and a young girl’s dress recreated from patterns from 1917. The models posed in his South Bronx studio on an elevated platform Howard built for the purpose of giving them the correct heroic perspective for a National Memorial. Howard directed the models to act out various scenes. He took over 12,000 photos with his cell phone camera to create the story told by A Soldier’s Journey.

Initially, Howard hired actors from Brooklyn to pose. When principle sculpture started in a new studio in New Jersey, he began to hire actual veterans. He felt only veterans’ faces could authentically express the trauma of battle.

Howard himself was transformed by the sculpture: he understood that he was making art in service of something much larger than himself. He was making sacred art in a sacred land, art for We the People.

As Howard shared with American Legion Magazine, "Here’s the thing I have figured out: I am making art that has to be understood by people who are not going to museums, who are coming to this memorial to see the history of our country. "

Howard’s realization about art for We the People is embodied in his Everyman figures in his relief. Widely known as America’s Michelangelo, Howard sculpted specific people in order to achieve universal feelings.

The Mother in the beginning of the sculpture is both one lovely model who sang and danced on Broadway, and she is a representative of all loving mothers and wives who must see their husband off to war. She is also an allegory for the United States, that was initially reluctant to send its citizens to a foreign land.

The Illumination Ceremony on September 13, 2024 at 6:45 pm will be live-streamed and covered by National television.

Rebecca DeSimone, Esquire
Sabin Howard Sculpture LLC
rdrosebud@gmail.com
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