Sculptor Hopes to Revive the Spirit of the Renaissance in America

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

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.
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.
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.