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Sculptor Hopes to Revive the Spirit of the Renaissance in America

Sculptor Sabin Howard sits with the maquette he created for "A Soldier's Journey," the sculptural component of the National World War I Memorial that was unveiled in Washington on Sept. 13, 2024. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

Stretching across 58 feet in Washington, D.C.’s Pershing Park is a bronze frieze that portrays “A Soldier’s Journey” through the demands and dangers of World War I. From left to right, 38 life-size human figures relate the experience of a single American soldier: his departure from home, the ordeal of battle and its aftermath, and his return. 

The massive work, unveiled in an illumination ceremony on September 13, was created by Italian American sculptor Sabin Howard, whose lifelong quest is to revive figurative sculpture in the great tradition of the Renaissance. The fact that he has made his case in a large-scale piece commemorating World War I is something Howard finds deeply ironic.

Howard analyzes his full size relief of “A Soldier’s Journey,” featuring 38 figures spread across 58 feet. The figures were cast in bronze for the installed memorial in Washington. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

“World War I marked the end of a philosophical thought process that the world is unified by a divine order. With the decimation of 22 million people, you move toward alienation and nihilism, the death of God and the beginning of the modern era,” Howard reflected. “That moment had a huge impact on art. The idea that the figurative is what art is all about was already starting to slide away. After World War I, the figure is no longer a part of the art world. The last moment that figure is paid attention is [during the] Art Deco [movement], and after that you move into abstract art.”

A hundred years later, Howard found himself commemorating in figurative sculpture those sacrifices made during the very event that led to the erasure of figurative art—ironic, indeed, yet somehow apt. “A Soldier’s Journey” is a powerful tribute to the Americans who fought in World War I, while its metaphysical reach “goes back to a previous age and speaks of our connection to the sacred,” Howard said. Its greatest potential: to spark what Howard calls “an American Renaissance revolution.”

Birth, Rebirth

When Howard was 19, he knew he wanted to become a sculptor. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

Sabin Howard the man was born in 1963 in New York. But Sabin Howard the sculptor was born precisely at 4 p.m. on October 22, 1982.

“That was the moment I decided to become an artist. I was working in a cabinet-making shop, and I called my dad and told him. He said, ‘How long is this going to last?’ So far, it’s lasted 42 years.” Then 19, Howard did not know how to draw and was unfamiliar with the procedures of the art world. He called an art school to ask about requirements. “They said I needed a portfolio, but I didn’t know what a portfolio was,” he recalled.

All the same, Howard knew what he wanted. He persisted, earning degrees from the Philadelphia College of Art and the New York Academy of Art, and used what he learned in school to build upon what he had already experienced of the great masterpieces of Western art. Because his mother is Italian, he spent many formative years in Italy. There, “I was exposed to the great artists of the Renaissance, and I thought that’s what art is. I decided to make art like the Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo [da Vinci].” He chose sculpture because in the Renaissance, “everything—drawing, painting, everything—was guided by the three-dimensional energy of sculpture, which has such presence.” 

The Aesthetic of the Figure

Howard sculpts from a live model for his World War I memorial. He recruited combat veterans to be his models. (Superhuman Film Productions)

With his dedication to the Renaissance and figurative art came certain core values. “There are values that govern what art is,” Howard explained. “Art comes from experience, and experience is driven by the divine nature of how the universe is assembled. The artist takes something that stems from that sacred element and that shows something representative of our potential as human beings.”

Howard’s earliest works were sculptures of ancient deities such as Hermes and Aphrodite. In 2011 came the work Howard was convinced would bring him to the art world’s attention. “It was called ‘Apollo,’ a male nude that took 3,500 hours and two models. I thought I had made something comparable to the works of the Italian Renaissance.”

Howard’s “Apollo” was unveiled in a gallery in New York’s Chelsea district, “a huge space with huge glass windows floor-to-ceiling and light pouring out of the windows.” About 300 people showed up for the unveiling. And then, “Nothing. Nothing happened.”

Sabin Howard’s plaster cast “Head of Apollo” for his final bronze statue. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

It was a watershed moment in the artist’s life. He decided, “I had to do something different after the ‘Apollo’ because I was really down on myself. I’d worked so hard all those years, and nothing was breaking through.”

Change of Direction

In 2014 came a call from the commission of the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., for proposals by architect-sculptor teams to create a park, incorporating a sculpture, that would commemorate the Americans who fought and died in World War I. In 2015, Howard, then 52, was chosen and teamed up with then-25-year-old architect-in-training Joseph Weishaar. Together, they conceived of a 58-foot-wide frieze that would be placed on a deck raised above a water feature.

Howard began work on the sculpture in January 2016, completing it eight and a half years later. 

Howard sculpts the maquette of “A Soldier’s Journey” at Weta Workshop, New Zealand, in November 2017. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

“Those years were dedicated to meetings with the commission and to 25 different iterations of the sculpture. Then came a 10-foot maquette and then another 5-foot version which became the final, green-lighted project. It was a battle,” he said.

One member of the commission suggested that Howard look at Henry Shrady’s bronze statue of Ulysses S. Grant, unveiled in 1924, located at the base of Capitol Hill. “I saw it and liked it and thought, ‘That’s a template I could follow,’” Howard recalled.

But not all figurative sculpture is alike, and Howard faced having to reshape his style. “I had to change from an esoteric, quiet classical style to one that is very vibrant and human and expressive and dramatic and kinetic. That’s a great challenge for an artist.”

Howard spent roughly 75,000 hours to create the figures in the World War I memorial. (Superhuman Film Productions)

Challenging in a different way were the “tortuous and difficult” meetings with the commission as the work progressed through its 25 iterations. “But in the end, it was worth it. It was almost like I had created something that tasted so good but so condensed, like French food. The flavor is very powerful and satiating, too,” he said.

Sculpture for Everyone

Howard sculpting a detail of a soldier’s pants in clay. (Superhuman Film Productions)

Howard called “A Soldier’s Journey” “a break from making sculpture for elites and governments.” His intention was for anyone to be able to connect with it. “An eighth grader with no interest in art will be fascinated by this movie-in-bronze that unfolds as you walk from left to right.” 

At the start, we see a man saying goodbye to his wife and daughter as the daughter hands him his helmet. We move to the right and see him engaged in fierce combat, while men around him are killed, wounded, and gassed. We then see the solemn aftermath of battle, and the return home to wife and daughter.

Details of Sabin’s maquette for “A Soldier’s Journey” displaying the soldier’s farewell. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

As the action moves from left to right, the face of the protagonist changes to reflect the different races and ethnic groups that contributed to the war effort. 

Howard’s wife, novelist Traci Slatton Howard, pointed out to him that the implied story of the sculpture parallels the “hero’s journey” story that is universal to the human experience.

Howard compares completing the enormous sculpture after nearly a decade of continuous work to “traveling at 90 miles an hour and then suddenly coming to a stop.” When he finished, he didn’t know what to do next, so he wrote a 750-page book about the experience. 

Details of Sabin’s maquette for “A Soldier’s Journey” displaying the soldier’s return. (Courtesy of Sabin Howard)

He sees “A Soldier’s Journey” as the spear-tip of a potential shift from abstract to figurative sculpture and is not reticent to make his position clear: “Schools, art critics, galleries, and museums are arrogant and ignorant of what art is.” 

To correct that, Howard believes we must re-connect with the divine that is inherent in human nature.

From Nov. Issue, Volume IV

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Features

Patriotism in Plaster

(Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)

In spite of her “made in the USA” appeal, being an American sculptor is not something Emily Bedard was always celebrated for. “When I first entered the molding industry, I had people who questioned my ability because I wasn’t French or European,” recalled Bedard. “I would produce a really strong structural element, and the salesman would sell it as if it was a French artist who made it.”

Clients, in fact, sometimes wouldn’t trust Bedard because she was American. “There is a general stereotype that Americans don’t have roots in traditional craftsmanship, that traditional American art has to come from Europeans,” she said. “That’s ridiculous,” she added, “since America has such strong roots in classicism.”

(Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)

At age 34, this native-Vermonter-gone-New-Yorker has undoubtedly proven that American hands are creating ageless, epochally awe-inspiring works of art that our country can be proud of. Bedard has won multiple awards in her young life, including the highly coveted Edward Fenno Hoffman Prize from the National Sculpture Society, and the Award for Emerging Excellence in the Classical Tradition from the prestigious Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which Bedard says has been a tremendous support for her continuing education as a sculptor.

Her early works include the breathtaking 6-foot Liberty statue at the 1876 Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which graces the highly celebrated Seaside Park in Bridgeport, Connecticut; the life-like clay bust of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, and the pair of gold eagles that flank the central clock at the Edward Kennedy Institute in Boston. Bedard has also had quite the A-list of private clients, including Mark Wahlberg, Yoko Ono, Oprah Winfrey, and Uma Thurman.

She is currently working on a piece for the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield Memorial, to be built at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This sizable memorial will occupy about 200 feet on the sacred public pathway, and will feature American soldiers and traditional military armaments, such as tanks and planes, with a desert background. The sculpture was commissioned by the National Desert Storm War Memorial Association, and it will be the first national memorial to represent the fierce conflict that soldiers faced in the Liberation of Kuwait campaign 30 years ago.

Bedard hopes to break ground sometime in 2022, and when she does, she’ll be working right down the street from the Lincoln Memorial, the fabled work of one of her idols, Daniel Chester French. Like Bedard, French was a native New Englander, who drew special inspiration from American patriotism.

(Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)

Bedard, admittedly not your typical millennial (she barely touches a computer), had always wanted to serve in the military, a bygone aspiration that regrettably went unfulfilled. “I always had this strong desire to give back to this country,” reflected Bedard. “I met a lot of pushback to do that, and wasn’t sure how I could use my limited abilities to do that, but then I figured out that public monuments can speak to the human spirit and remind people of the achievements and honors of the people who have served our country.” She added that this gave her “a deeper motivation with the abilities I had been given.”

In furthering her commitment to promoting Yankee craftsmanship, Emily purposely searched out an American art school: to be specific, a small, charming one in New England, as she describes. She attended the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, located in a quintessentially quaint seaside town in Connecticut. “I chose this school because it was very evident that when graduating from there, you were going to come out with very traditional skills,” said Bedard.

She also wanted to bring credence to the profession as being more than a stigmatized starving artist pursuit. Born to two artists and introduced at an early age to artist colonies like Maine’s Monhegan Island, Emily also had a strong interest in the sciences, specifically engineering. And so, to become a true sculptor, Emily molded the two together, and found her niche in ornamental work for high-end architecture.

(Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)

Today, in addition to running her art studio in the hip Greenpoint Historic District of Brooklyn, Bedard is the creative director at Foster Reeve & Associates, a group of globally-renowned custom designers of ornate custom plaster molding. Whether it’s fancy cornice molding on a mansion, or the sword of a soldier, Emily is obsessively preoccupied with unassuming allegorical details. She has an undying love for sculpted “drapery.” She explained that she has always really liked drapery “like that on a classic Roman statue, the way cloth falls on a figure and almost appears to cling to the form, as if it is real flesh.”

When colleague Meredith Bergmann asked her to assist with the making of the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument on Literary Row in Central Park, Bedard was, of course, excited to be a humble part of that creation. It is an imposing 14-foot statue, which features American rights activists Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton having a conversation. She described it as a “long overdue representation of women.” There was also this added bonus for Bedard: “I got to do the curls of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s hair!”

(Lux Aeterna Photography for American Essence)
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Arts & Letters Features

An Artistic Mission

Johanna Schwaiger met Celine Ma, an instructor of classical Chinese dance, who became her model for a sculpture. (Lux Aeterna Photography)

Growing up in Salzburg, Austria, Johanna Schwaiger was constantly surrounded by beautiful art—from the city’s Baroque architecture to majestic fountains and public gardens. “I always thought the masters of these works were of a distant past, … had magical skills, and I thought if I could only learn a little bit of what they knew, I would be so happy,” she said.

Her father, an art teacher, taught her basic drawing and sculpting techniques. Working in clay gave her true joy. “It became my world to retreat to, whenever I felt I needed to escape somewhere, like Alice entering her wonderland,” she said. Today, Schwaiger has not only achieved her childhood dream of becoming a sculptor but also seeks to inspire the next generation of artists to create the kind of art that so moved her.

She came to the United States in 2017 to work with New Masters Academy, a subscription-based online tutorial platform for people to learn fine arts techniques. To begin with, she was invited to teach a sculpture tutorial on video. Today, she is the academy’s program director. Similar to Netflix, people can stream videos of creative artists teaching their crafts from around the world. Even top art schools and entertainment studios, including the Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ringling College of Art and Design, and the National Sculpture Society, have signed up for courses.

A Journey

It would take some time before Schwaiger could fulfill her passion for arts education. At age 15, she enrolled in a local school for sculptors. But while the school taught wood and stone carving, she wanted to learn traditional figurative sculpture, like that of the Renaissance masters, together with training in ink drawing, clay sculpting, and bronze casting. After graduating from high school, Schwaiger searched ateliers and schools in Salzburg, Vienna, and other nearby European cities, but none taught these techniques.

Some in the arts world told Schwaiger that realism had become a thing of the past, so she decided to train herself by studying the works of old masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Schwaiger also majored in art history at the University of Salzburg, and soon picked up commissions to paint portraits and sculpt figures for churches and graveyards, but she still felt a need for more schooling. At age 26, she discovered that the Florence Academy of Art in Italy taught the traditional curriculum. After completing her training there, she returned to her high school alma mater and began teaching a course in traditional figurative art.

Schwaiger was inspired by the grace and strength exhibited by artists of classical Chinese dance. (Lux Aeterna Photography)

Schwaiger has since made it her mission to continue the lineage of the classical art tradition, through New Masters Academy, education initiatives, and her private art studio. “I try to inspire the younger generation to hone their craft and really focus on the craft as much as possible—and make them understand that if you get strong in your craft, that’s how you become free in your expression,” she said in a recent interview held at Fei Tian College in Middletown, New York, where she taught a four-week summer sculpting class.

Now 38, Schwaiger taught her Fei Tian College students human anatomy and how to draw from a live model. To her, it’s about respecting the process pioneered by the great classical artists of the Western tradition. “You need to honor the past, what the ancestors learned and what they brought out. It’s basically taking the torch and bringing the torch further. That’s what I believe in,” said Schwaiger.

Inspired by the East

In her latest project, Schwaiger took inspiration from a different culture. Several years ago, she and her husband attended a performance by Shen Yun Performing Arts, the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company. Based in New York, the company seeks to revive the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization through dance and music. Classical Chinese dance, in particular, has a lineage tracing back to imperial courts and ancient plays. Schwaiger was touched not only by the storytelling but also by the technical prowess of the dancers. “I could see that this is the kind of excellence … that artists in the past were aiming for. And it’s really moving people’s hearts with beauty, and with excellent techniques,” she said.

Schwaiger thought of capturing through sculpture the grace and strength of the dancers she saw on stage. “What amazed me so much was the variety of dance poses that the dancers can do in sync, and so the whole choreography seems to be a language that is told on stage,” she said.

Through a mutual artist friend, Schwaiger recently met Celine Ma, a 22-year-old instructor of classical Chinese dance at Northern Academy of the Arts, a private middle and high school in Middletown, New York. Together, they thought of possible poses that the figure could take on, with Ma occasionally modeling the movements. At first, Schwaiger found it challenging to translate dance, a moving art form, into the still form of sculpture—especially conveying the light, airy movements of classical Chinese dancers. “It’s a moment in time that you’re capturing, and so the pose I picked is not a resting pose. It’s more like she’s like a flower blossoming into her pose,” said Schwaiger.

The Sculpture

One of the dancer’s legs is grounded, but the rest of her body is twisted toward the viewer. Meanwhile, her extended arm is gesturing toward the sky. “I was trying to think of how plants grow. That helped me to bring that grace into the piece … like how a flower opens its petals. That’s the image I tried to keep in mind as I was sculpting this,” said Schwaiger.

Schwaiger said that she envisioned a flower blossoming while making the sculpture. (Lux Aeterna Photography)

Ma said of the hand gesture: “It’s reaching high, like giving people hope and aiming for something brighter and higher.” She was not only impressed by Schwaiger’s dedication to artistry but also thrilled to see classical Chinese dance represented in another art form. “Dancers in the past—we don’t have a lot of documented footage, and a lot of techniques are lost because there’s no way that someone is passing [them] down through thousands of years,” Ma said, noting that it was thrilling to see “a sculpture that can be everlasting.”

Through working on the sculpture project, Ma also gained a newfound understanding of how Western and Eastern arts can complement each other. And through discussing the posture of the sculpture, she became more aware of the muscles she was using while dancing, and “the beauty of the human form.”

The Role of Art in Society

Ma trained in classical Chinese dance for seven years, learning the inner meanings behind the art form. She said that the training helped her to embody values that were appreciated in ancient Chinese culture, such as self-discipline, being willing to endure hardships, and having an optimistic outlook. To master the art form, “you really have to build these values within you, and it’s something that comes with your heart,” said Ma.

Schwaiger similarly believes that artists must cultivate good values in order to create something beautiful. “The artist very much has to immerse themself with the idea of beauty to communicate it to somebody else. And if the artist is thinking of the audience, wanting the audience to connect with that beauty, the person who is looking at the art is going to feel that. So that’s why I think art has such importance for society,” she said.

She also firmly believes that art has the power to elevate people. “If you’re looking at graceful things, powerful things, it’s naturally helping you to connect with these virtues. … It’s reminding people of these qualities that you should have in yourself,” she said. That’s why she hopes to one day create public art that can inspire through beauty—whether it’s sculpture in schools, hospitals, or public squares.

Schwaiger plans to cast her dancer sculpture in bronze next, using an ancient technique known as lost-wax casting, and she hopes the sculpture can be placed in a public setting one day. With art beautifying its surrounding environment, “you like to spend time there, you’d like to sit down and be there together with others, and you feel the other people that are present—and that’s very essential for our civilization,” she said.

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Hidden Gems The Great Outdoors

The Hartman Rock Garden

View of Courtyard in Harman Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio. Photographed by Eric Bess.

There’s a small artistic treasure in the little city of Springfield, Ohio. Sometimes an everyday person creates a work of art that captures the spirit of a time. “The Hartman Rock Garden,” created by Springfield resident Harry George “Ben” Hartman, is one of those works of art.

The foundation of Ben’s garden is characterized by enduring patience in the face of hardship. In 1932, Ben was laid off from his job as a result of the Great Depression.

Jobless at 48 years old, Ben was trying to find ways to stay positive and keep busy. His garden started with his intention to create a fishing pond out of cement. He didn’t know that this project would turn into an artistic endeavor lasting the rest of his life.

For the next 12 years, Ben would spend his time creating his garden. He gathered inspiration from multiple sources including friends, family, magazines, books, radio, and film. These sources would provide the content for many of his handmade structures and figurines.

Some of the objects in the garden are handmade using concrete, metal, glass, stone, wood, and anything he could get his hands on. He built over 50 structures, countless figurines, and surrounded them all with numerous plants and found items.

Closeup of Noah’s Ark and the fourteen sets of animals. Photographed by Eric Bess.

Walking through the garden is like being transported into a miniature world containing themes of American history and Christianity. Ben created replicas of historical monuments including George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, the White House, and Lincoln’s cabin, all of which are around the size of large dollhouses.

At the back corners of the garden, Ben created a replica of Noah’s Ark and a cathedral, which is the largest structure in the garden. “Noah’s Ark” displays fourteen small pairs of animals walking toward the entrance of the ark. The “Cathedral” is modeled after medieval cathedrals in Italy and has Madonna figurines in it along with a version of Leonardo da Vinci’s last supper.

Closeup of the Madonna in the Cathedral. Photographed by Eric Bess.

Outside of the historical and religious items are cultural items depicting folktales and nursery rhymes. Ben had “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” gnomes around the central birdbath. He also made a water well he called “Jack and Jill,” a boy inside a pumpkin he called “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater,” and small figurines on a shoe called “Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe.”

Sometimes life can throw us the unexpected. It can be difficult to know how we will take care of ourselves or our families when we are laid off from our jobs or an unexpected illness arises. For 12 years, Ben dealt with the difficulty of being laid off not by feeling sorry for himself, but by celebrating the things in life for which he was grateful.

Gratitude is my biggest takeaway from Ben’s project. Despite the hardships life throws our way, we can choose to be grateful for and celebrate the things that are most meaningful to us. So maybe this obscure work of art can encourage the spirit of our time: a spirit of celebration and gratitude for life.

Eric Bess is a practicing representational artist and is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA).

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Hidden Gems The Great Outdoors

Desert Creations

Sea Serpent at Borrego Springs (George Lamson).

The sculptures of Ricardo Breceda

Photographed by Jeff Perkin

 

In the timeless scenery of the Southern California desert, ferocious dinosaurs and larger-than-life creatures are brought to life through the animated work of Ricardo Breceda. Where else can one find a 350-foot-long sea serpent which appears to swim through the surface of the desert floor and under a road? The impeccably-detailed, rusted-metal monster is just one of 130 sculptures in Galleta Meadows of Borrego Springs, CA. Other imaginative sculptures include a scorpion facing off against a grasshopper, incredibly life-like rams rearing up to head butt each other, and a mother camel nestled against her child. Formed out of sheet metal that has been cut, shaped and welded into place, these majestic creations come to life in the sparse desert landscape.

Dinosaur Fight in Borrego Springs, CA.

Ricardo Breceda has been called an “accidental artist” whose talent for metal working was initially put to the test when his daughter asked if he could make her a life-size dinosaur. After successfully building a Tyrannosaurus Rex for her birthday, Breceda found his calling. Originally from Durango, Mexico, Breceda’s artistic story is an inspiring tale of dreams becoming reality. Destiny paired Breceda with a passionate and wealthy patron, Dennis Avery (heir to his family’s Avery labels fortune), who hired the artist to fill his desert property of Galleta Meadows with prehistoric sculptures.

Ricardo Breceda at his open-air gallery in Aguanga, CA.

On top of the large collection of sculptures found in the Borrego Springs area, Breceda has hundreds more for sale at his public, open-air gallery in Aguanga, CA. The gallery is an epic attraction in its own right where row upon row of sculptures attract several hundred visitors every week. Ricardo keeps the gallery experience gratuitous for visitors out of the belief that his art should be freely accessible for everyone to enjoy.

Rows of sculptures at Breceda’s open-air gallery in Aguanga, CA.

Breceda’s dedication to each of his creations is evident in their masterful design and execution. Whether it is a mouthful of fearsome dinosaur teeth, or a full-scale jeep climbing up desert boulders (with a sculpted driver), Breceda fashions many of his works to be frozen in expressive movement. Sculptural details range from thousands of round scales on the sea serpent to innumerable thinly cut strands of metal curled meticulously on a llama’s fur. The patchwork panels of sheet metal build out the artist’s forms with surprisingly realistic anatomy in addition to girth. With the help of a team of artisans, and depending on their scale, his works can take from a few weeks up to several months to fabricate.

Horses jumping over the highway down the road from Breceda’s gallery in Aguanga, CA.

Adults and children light up when they witness the whimsical creations in Breceda’s prolific body of work spanning two decades. “The best pay for an artist is when people like what you do…when people feel what you do,” proudly remarked Ricardo. He is an artist who certainly exudes passion and a childlike joy for his creations. Amidst the sands of time, his imaginative prehistoric and mythical creations join exaggerated forms of this world for this extraordinary artistic experience.

Shaded by a giant elephant in Borrego Springs, CA.

Jeff Perkin is a graphic artist and Integrative Nutrition Health Coach available at WholySelf.com