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World War I Memorial Sculptor Sabin Howard – American Renaissance Man Finds New Art In Old Ideas By Claudia Henneberry June 2024
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A Soldier's Journey
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Master Sculptor, Sabin Howard, an American Renaissance man with American Renaissance ideas, has set out to restore Western Civilization, one soldier, one memorial at a time. He is the world’s leading classicist sculptor at work today, joining the ranks of the greats of days gone by - Michelangelo, Giambologna, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Bernini.
Almost as if it were preordained, Sabin spent part of his formative years trapesing through the museums of Italy where masters of the past left grandi opere d'arte of extraordinary beauty and meaning. He lived in Italy for the first three years of his life, then spent every summer there until the age of 18. He even went back to live in Rome from 1985-1986. It was in that ancient land where he developed a keen interest and admiration for - and an understanding of - Renaissance Humanism and visual beauty.
“Italians have a great respect for visual beauty and visual beauty is about being human,” Sabin maintains.
The term, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ defines the philosophical thought that radically transformed the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe especially during the High Renaissance. This thought compelled artists to return to classical Roman and Greek philosophies concerning universal man and his place in the world.
That period was foundational to Western culture, advancing "the new idea of self-reliance and civic virtue" among the common people, combined with a belief in the uniqueness, dignity, and value of human life. “High Renaissance artists' key concerns were to present pieces of visual, symmetrical, and compositional perfection. The period is noted for infusing ideals of beauty and harmony back into art.”
Sabin embraces those same ideals which he says are missing in art today. He accurately describes ‘modern art’ as de-humanizing and destructive. “It’s about taking away our potential. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes.”
Carrying with him the inspiration from the world of the Italian masters, Sabin attended the Philadelphia College of Art in the early ‘80s to pursue his passion. “I got an education in Western Civilization in how to make Renaissance Art – something that had been decimated and cleared from the art world.” He quips, “Art is who we are.”
He had found his purpose and would soon discover his potential.
He has spent the better part of the past five years, along with two assistant sculptors, producing a larger-than-life sculpture which represents a return to humanism. In this sculpture, Sabin commemorates the sacrifice of WWI soldiers who suffered the horrors of war in the fight for freedom – the voyage that America took through the Great War.
“We are going back to something that is sacred, that has value,” Sabin reverently speaks of his creative goal. To paraphrase his sentiment, we need to belong to something bigger than ourselves.
I asked Sabin, “But why sculpture? It’s so difficult.” He responded, “BECAUSE it’s difficult!” He says what he does is very spiritual – he has to portray not only the surface, but what’s below the surface of his subjects – those physical and psychological attributes that make-up the surface as a whole.
According to Sabin’s Communications Director and Creative Liaison, Rebecca DeSimone, “The sculpture, A Soldier’s Journey, years in the making, will serve as the centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. The immense frieze tells the story of an American reluctantly answering the call to war—a deeply personal and individual story and the grand symbolic story of the nation all at once. Across five scenes and 38 larger-than-life-size human figures, it is nearly 60 feet long and ten feet high.”
A documentary, Heroic: Sabin Howard Sculpts the WWI Memorial, is due to be released in June of 2025.
This dynamic yet delicate work required 700 hours per figure. Every curve, every crease, every wrinkle; every expression, every movement, every emotion is portrayed perfectly by the artist’s hands, his head, and his heart.
In order to achieve the dramatic reality, Sabin commissioned veterans as models who have experienced the toil of war – translating life into art. Only our heroes can reveal the true scars of that experience.
The fragment of the sculpture Sabin calls ‘The Cost of War’ is “the sculptural heart” of his National WWI Memorial. The devastation and compassion, painstakingly carved into the faces of the capable nurse and fellow soldiers cradling the dead hero, reveal the sacrifice, just as Michelangelo accomplishes in depicting Mary’s sorrow over the death of Jesus in the Pieta.
Michelangelo’s Pieta is said to be “a profound artistic representation that captures the depth of human suffering, the power of compassion, and the possibility of redemption.” Sabin admits to channeling Michelangelo, so, it is no surprise that, in A Soldier’s Journey, Sabin expertly exposes the human spirit.
Sabin sees himself, as we all should, “responsible to humanity – to history.”
I couldn’t leave out this quote from another source where Sabin explains what he hopes the memorial will evoke in a younger audience: “I’m hoping to make something that lets a kid, when he’s walking along the wall, experience it like it’s a movie in bronze,” Sabin says. “The scenes are changing. And the kid goes home and he’s like, ‘Oh my God, I got to see what World War I was all about.’ And he gets the idea that we’re on a journey—each and every one of us.”
My hope is that it also sparks respect and patriotism and a call to duty.
When I enlightened Sabin on what the Monuments Project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is doing to our history and our monuments, he was simultaneously furious and motivated. “We are fighting a war against dark forces right now. This is war and we’re just getting started.” (Learn more here and here about the campaign to destroy our heritage.)
I asked Sabin to expound upon his view of the violent, well-funded forces that are erasing our history and tearing down our sculptures and statues. “If you destroy Western art and culture, what are you going to replace it with? When you destroy something . . . you create a void and that void is a great way to rebuild and re-direct history in a different direction than it needs to be going.”
“Politics has stepped into a territory that is sacred - where it doesn’t belong. I am in service to ... elevate and try to bring us toward higher consciousness in a moment that is fraught with turmoil. I wanted to create something that gives back to this country.”
And what’s up next for Sabin Howard, aside from a top-secret future project? Just hours after I informed him of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s disturbing Monuments Project, he decided to produce a podcast to be aired on Patriot TV, where he will discuss history, culture, and art and combat the mission to demolish them.
Like the soldier we follow in A Soldier’s Journey through ‘the war to end all wars,’ Sabin Howard is, in his own right, a valiant soldier, a Master Sargent, in fact, leading the way in this battle to save Western Civilization; to restore American attributes of truth, perseverance, honor, courage, and sacrifice through his art.
Through his own blood, sweat, and broken clavicle from a bike accident, Sabin Howard wrought with his human hands an incomparable contribution to America, reminding us of what we all have in common. We are grateful to you, Master Sculptor, for your profound dedication to our nation’s great heritage.
The National WWI Monument will be unveiled in Pershing Park in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 2024.
Almost as if it were preordained, Sabin spent part of his formative years trapesing through the museums of Italy where masters of the past left grandi opere d'arte of extraordinary beauty and meaning. He lived in Italy for the first three years of his life, then spent every summer there until the age of 18. He even went back to live in Rome from 1985-1986. It was in that ancient land where he developed a keen interest and admiration for - and an understanding of - Renaissance Humanism and visual beauty.
“Italians have a great respect for visual beauty and visual beauty is about being human,” Sabin maintains.
The term, ‘Renaissance Humanism,’ defines the philosophical thought that radically transformed the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe especially during the High Renaissance. This thought compelled artists to return to classical Roman and Greek philosophies concerning universal man and his place in the world.
That period was foundational to Western culture, advancing "the new idea of self-reliance and civic virtue" among the common people, combined with a belief in the uniqueness, dignity, and value of human life. “High Renaissance artists' key concerns were to present pieces of visual, symmetrical, and compositional perfection. The period is noted for infusing ideals of beauty and harmony back into art.”
Sabin embraces those same ideals which he says are missing in art today. He accurately describes ‘modern art’ as de-humanizing and destructive. “It’s about taking away our potential. It’s the Emperor’s new clothes.”
Carrying with him the inspiration from the world of the Italian masters, Sabin attended the Philadelphia College of Art in the early ‘80s to pursue his passion. “I got an education in Western Civilization in how to make Renaissance Art – something that had been decimated and cleared from the art world.” He quips, “Art is who we are.”
He had found his purpose and would soon discover his potential.
He has spent the better part of the past five years, along with two assistant sculptors, producing a larger-than-life sculpture which represents a return to humanism. In this sculpture, Sabin commemorates the sacrifice of WWI soldiers who suffered the horrors of war in the fight for freedom – the voyage that America took through the Great War.
“We are going back to something that is sacred, that has value,” Sabin reverently speaks of his creative goal. To paraphrase his sentiment, we need to belong to something bigger than ourselves.
I asked Sabin, “But why sculpture? It’s so difficult.” He responded, “BECAUSE it’s difficult!” He says what he does is very spiritual – he has to portray not only the surface, but what’s below the surface of his subjects – those physical and psychological attributes that make-up the surface as a whole.
According to Sabin’s Communications Director and Creative Liaison, Rebecca DeSimone, “The sculpture, A Soldier’s Journey, years in the making, will serve as the centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. The immense frieze tells the story of an American reluctantly answering the call to war—a deeply personal and individual story and the grand symbolic story of the nation all at once. Across five scenes and 38 larger-than-life-size human figures, it is nearly 60 feet long and ten feet high.”
A documentary, Heroic: Sabin Howard Sculpts the WWI Memorial, is due to be released in June of 2025.
This dynamic yet delicate work required 700 hours per figure. Every curve, every crease, every wrinkle; every expression, every movement, every emotion is portrayed perfectly by the artist’s hands, his head, and his heart.
In order to achieve the dramatic reality, Sabin commissioned veterans as models who have experienced the toil of war – translating life into art. Only our heroes can reveal the true scars of that experience.
The fragment of the sculpture Sabin calls ‘The Cost of War’ is “the sculptural heart” of his National WWI Memorial. The devastation and compassion, painstakingly carved into the faces of the capable nurse and fellow soldiers cradling the dead hero, reveal the sacrifice, just as Michelangelo accomplishes in depicting Mary’s sorrow over the death of Jesus in the Pieta.
Michelangelo’s Pieta is said to be “a profound artistic representation that captures the depth of human suffering, the power of compassion, and the possibility of redemption.” Sabin admits to channeling Michelangelo, so, it is no surprise that, in A Soldier’s Journey, Sabin expertly exposes the human spirit.
Sabin sees himself, as we all should, “responsible to humanity – to history.”
I couldn’t leave out this quote from another source where Sabin explains what he hopes the memorial will evoke in a younger audience: “I’m hoping to make something that lets a kid, when he’s walking along the wall, experience it like it’s a movie in bronze,” Sabin says. “The scenes are changing. And the kid goes home and he’s like, ‘Oh my God, I got to see what World War I was all about.’ And he gets the idea that we’re on a journey—each and every one of us.”
My hope is that it also sparks respect and patriotism and a call to duty.
When I enlightened Sabin on what the Monuments Project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is doing to our history and our monuments, he was simultaneously furious and motivated. “We are fighting a war against dark forces right now. This is war and we’re just getting started.” (Learn more here and here about the campaign to destroy our heritage.)
I asked Sabin to expound upon his view of the violent, well-funded forces that are erasing our history and tearing down our sculptures and statues. “If you destroy Western art and culture, what are you going to replace it with? When you destroy something . . . you create a void and that void is a great way to rebuild and re-direct history in a different direction than it needs to be going.”
“Politics has stepped into a territory that is sacred - where it doesn’t belong. I am in service to ... elevate and try to bring us toward higher consciousness in a moment that is fraught with turmoil. I wanted to create something that gives back to this country.”
And what’s up next for Sabin Howard, aside from a top-secret future project? Just hours after I informed him of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s disturbing Monuments Project, he decided to produce a podcast to be aired on Patriot TV, where he will discuss history, culture, and art and combat the mission to demolish them.
Like the soldier we follow in A Soldier’s Journey through ‘the war to end all wars,’ Sabin Howard is, in his own right, a valiant soldier, a Master Sargent, in fact, leading the way in this battle to save Western Civilization; to restore American attributes of truth, perseverance, honor, courage, and sacrifice through his art.
Through his own blood, sweat, and broken clavicle from a bike accident, Sabin Howard wrought with his human hands an incomparable contribution to America, reminding us of what we all have in common. We are grateful to you, Master Sculptor, for your profound dedication to our nation’s great heritage.
The National WWI Monument will be unveiled in Pershing Park in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 2024.