National World War I monument nears finish line in Englewood

They won't come back till it's over Over There.

"Over there" being the U.K. — where the last of 38 World War I figures that sculptor Sabin Howard fashioned in his Englewood studio are about to be shipped. Probably, the week of the 15th.

Those remaining five figures mark the completion — essentially — of the American World War I monument. What remains now is for the clay figures to be cast in bronze, in a foundry in Gloucestershire, and then brought back to the U.S. to be assembled at the site.

It's an epic project that has taken four years to finish — as long as the war it commemorates.

"It's a great feeling," said Howard, with whom we caught up recently at his South Van Brunt Street studio during a lunch break.

"A Soldier's Journey," as the artist calls his 58-foot long, 10-foot high bronze tableau, will be unveiled in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13 — Gen. John J. Pershing's birthday.

"I've given so much to my work," Howard said. "It's my passion. So now all of a sudden it's like I've done something that is being recognized by a lot of people of actual importance. The biggest thing I've always wanted to do is make art for We the People. An art that everyone would understand no matter what their education. And that's actually happening."

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Story in bronze

The five figures that Howard is about to ship represent the climax, and resolution, of a colossal story he's telling in bronze.

Following his frieze from left to right, the viewer will see a departing father being handed a helmet by his little daughter.

The ensuing tableaux show him one soldier among many, as bayonets thrust and bombs explode, and the wounded, in the care of nurses, scream in agony. Then, in the final episode — the one that's just been completed — the soldier returns a civilian, handing the helmet back to his daughter.

"The most important figure of the last grouping is the daughter," Howard said. "She is the alpha and omega of the whole relief. He hands the helmet to her. She is the next generation. World War II."

He used his own daughter Madeleine — 11 at the time — as the model for the little girl. His wife, novelist and filmmaker Traci Slatton, modeled one of the nurses. His daughter Julia modeled another. And he used actual veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan as models for many of his soldiers — a hands-across-the-generations gesture that speaks to the interconnectedness of all soldiers, all times, all wars.

"This sculpture was made specifically to honor those veterans of 100 years ago, and those veterans of today," he said. "Because there's nothing more honorable than to sacrifice oneself for one's country. That's a sacred act."

Of those five final figures, one is based on a ranger who fought in Iraq. Another is modeled on a Marine who served in Afghanistan. He has Asian features. Not, says Howard, by accident.

"One hundred years ago when there was a Welcome Home parade in New York City, there was a Chinese man who carried the flag down Fifth Avenue," he said. "So we've returned to that historical concept."

Transformation

It was in 2019 that Howard transformed a derelict 5,000-square-foot printing plant on South Van Brunt street into a studio, specifically for this project.

Most days, there have been a half-dozen or more people in the place — his assistant, Charlie Mostow, his various models, visiting sculptors, and his wife Traci, who has been documenting the whole process on video.

It's a painstaking business: covering a Styrofoam "maquette" with clay to create the figures, then transferring them through a silicon mold to wax, which in turn becomes the ceramic shell — into which hot bronze will be poured.

Not the least of the challenges is getting the finished figures to England in one piece.

"They're cut and disassembled, and packed very carefully," Slatton said. "The arms get chopped so they don't crumble. If you ship them in summer, you have to use a refrigerated shipping container. Because if it gets hot, the surface melts and the work is gone."

It's work that makes Howard very proud — and perhaps a little defensive.

As a sculptor, he's a realist in the mold of Michelangelo, Donatello, Rodin. His figures have arms and legs, a torso and a face. And in all the customary places.

That hasn't been the fashion since — not coincidentally — World War I, when the shock of global cataclysm blew those Renaissance ideals of man's heroism and nobility to smithereens. Since then, art has been all irony, alienation, abstraction. It's been a while since we proclaimed, with Shakespeare, "What a piece of work is man!"

Howard wants to rekindle that feeling. And he hopes the public will respond — whether the critics do or not.

Timely project

"I'm going back to sacred values with this memorial," said Howard, who trained in Italy and at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). "These values of heroism and family, and rising to the occasion. This goes back to this heritage we have, this figurative tradition that goes back to the Greeks and the Romans."

There's another sacred value he wants to invoke. Respect for the U.S. Constitution — in whose name these soldiers fought and died.

It hasn't escaped his notice that his bronze sculpture group, in an architectural setting by Joe Weishaar, will be unveiled in Washington's Pershing Park less than two months before a national election — one that could have a devastating impact on that document's continuing viability.

"That Constitution is what binds us together as a country," he said. "And right now it's trying to be overturned, and I find it incredibly interesting that this project lands at precisely this moment historically. When there is an attempt to overthrow the concept of We the People. I think there is something working here that is outside of us, that is larger than us."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: World War I sculpture nears completion in Englewood NJ