Master Sculptor Sabin Howard in his studio

Sabin Howard sculpting Screaming dad

Sabin Howard sculpting Doughboy

Sabin Howard sculpting model Javi Robles

Master sculptor Sabin Howard designed, created, and sculpted A Soldier’s Journey, the heart of the WWI Memorial installed next month in Nation's Capital

KENT, CT, UNITED STATES, August 9, 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.

In 1982, Howard attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The study of literature did not set him afire to continue learning; he and his girlfriend dropped out and moved to Philadelphia. Howard took a job in a cabinetry shop in South Philly, planning to learn the craft of fine wood-working. A few days into his apprenticeship, he realized he wasn’t using his brain. He quit again.

Walking home, Howard was struck by the lightning bolt of an epiphany: he would become an artist. He called the Philadelphia College of Art and asked to speak with Admissions. The Admissions director told him to come in and bring his portfolio.

Howard asked, “What’s a portfolio?”

The admissions director invited him to her office, anyway. She advised Howard to learn to draw and recommended a book: Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

At the time, Howard believed there were only three artists: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. He happily took up drawing, the foundation of art. He intended to emulate his idols.

Howard worked in construction during the day and drew for several hours every night. He was committed and he never missed a day of drawing.

His diligence paid off with admission to the Philadelphia College of Art. There Howard learned figure drawing and sculpting using a Renaissance system of proportions. He finished his education with an intensive sculpting apprenticeship in Rome under Roman sculptor Paolo Carossone.

For decades Howard labored in his studio, producing gorgeous figure after figure: Stubbornness and Persistence, Ego, Human Condition, Mars, Man, Anger, Eros, the Draped Figure of Mother Mary, the Dancing Females, and Bust of Ceres, as well as the heroic-scale Hermes, Apollo, and Aphrodite.

Howard’s sculptures are beautiful. They are intelligent. They demonstrate Howard’s excellence as an artist. Howard intends his work to uplift the viewer and to elevate the human spirit—and it does.

Shallow irony and kitschy gimmicks have no place in the body of work of a true master. Rather, it is beauty, excellence, and the artist’s skill that matter.


The scam-art silliness of balloon dogs and shovels hanging from the ceiling is given short shrift when compared to the mesmerizing art of great maestros like Praxiteles, Phidias, Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, Carpeaux, Canova, St. Gaudens, French, and Howard. The longest lines in the world to see any art are at the Vatican and the Louvre, where people line up for kilometers to see such masterpieces as Michelangelo’s ceiling and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

Howard is playing forward ideals of art that require extensive training and practice-time to achieve, art that is entirely of this moment and forward-looking while also honoring the achievements of Western Civilization.

After sculpting for 35,000+ hours from life models in his studio, Howard was ready in 2016 when he and architect Joe Weishaar won the Design Competition for the National WWI Memorial. Howard set forth to create a composition that would rival any of his predecessors—and that would pay homage to the true courage and sacrifice of the 4.8 million men and women who mobilized to serve in the Great War.

Sabin Howard created the 38 figure relief A Soldier’s Journey, a 60’ long, 10’ high bronze relief weighing 25 tons. This relief is a kind of movie-in-bronze, telling the story of a doughboy leaving home, hearing the call to arms, entering the madness and chaos of war, suffering the tragic costs of war, and returning home, triumphant but transformed, forever.

Howard’s figures, like those in Michelangelo’s great Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, are entwined. Howard sees all of humanity as interdependent. A Soldier’s Journey is imbued with reverence for our shared humanity as well as respect for the sacred service of our doughboys, and all veterans.

As The Epoch Times shared, Sabin Howard says, "I wanted to make an art form that would be understandable by all...It's a piece that really harkens back to what the Renaissance art did, which is, it speaks about our potential..."

The National WWI Memorial will be Illuminated in a candle-lit ceremony on September 13, 2024. This even will be live-streamed and covered by National television.

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