The Daily Signal - World War I Memorial Sculptor Sabin Howard Is on a Mission to Change American Art

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Meet Sabin Howard, the master sculptor behind the breathtaking World War I Memorial in Washington D.C. In this Daily Signal interview, Howard shares his remarkable journey from a 19-year-old who had never drawn before to becoming the creator of a monumental 60-foot bronze sculpture featuring 38 figures. Howard reveals the challenges he faced creating this national monument—from battling bureaucracy and modernist opposition to sculpting through a global pandemic. He explains his vision for art that elevates the human spirit and unites Americans around their shared history. "It's a sculpture for We the People," says Howard, describing how he captured the energy of real veterans in his work. The memorial honors not just WWI soldiers but speaks to all who have served, creating a universal tribute to the human journey through conflict. Howard also discusses his next ambitious project—a monument celebrating American freedom for the nation's 250th birthday, and why he's moved from the East Coast to Utah to pursue this vision. Our interview explores the intersection of art, culture, and national identity, offering a glimpse into the mind of an artist determined to create work that brings communities together and restores pride in American history. Follow Sabin Howard: SabinHoward.com X/Twitter: @SabinHoward Instagram: @SabinHowardSculpture #WorldWarIMemorial #SabinHoward #WashingtonDC #AmericanSculptor #BronzeSculpture #VeteransMemorial #DailySignal The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: https://secured.dailysignal.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Please feast responsibly. We are joined by the great Sabin Howard on the Daily Signal today, a master sculptor and the creator of the World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. in Pershing Park just off the National Mall. Saban, it is an honor to speak with you. Thanks for joining us. My pleasure to be here. Thank you, Rob.

Well, there's so much I'd like to cover. And having heard you on some of my favorite podcasts like Victor Davis Hansen show and Mike Roe, and I know Steve Bannon and you've been on his program, I've heard you share your story. And for our Daily Signal audience that, might not be familiar with your journey into the world of art, I'd like to start there because it really resonated with me as somebody who really followed your passion and you decided that you weren't going to get stuck making cabinets. You were going to do something that you found

motivating. So tell us about the journey and how it led you down this path. Well, I'd gone to school, dropped out first year college as a lit major. And then I end up in South Philadelphia on a Monday morning, 1982, and I decided by Thursday, it was like, this is just not working out. I'd been sanding all these cabinets through the grades and putting wood in a 50-gallon oil drum to keep the room warm, and I just felt, wow, I have a brain. I'm not using it here. And I went over to my boss, and I said, listen, this is not working out. And he said, well, if you don't stay, you can't be a cabinet maker. I said, well, I just, it's not working out. And he goes, well, I'm not going to pay you then. So I gave him the finger and I walked out to door, being a rambunctious

19-year-old, and it was 4 o'clock and I made a call to my dad. I said, hey, dad, I want to go to art school. And he goes, how long is this going to last? And then he hung up on me. And the next call was to the Philadelphia College of Art and I asked to speak to admissions. Admissions patched through. And this lady answered the phone and said, what can do to help you, sir? And I said, well, I'd like to go to art school. She said, well, do you have a portfolio? And I said, what is a portfolio. And she said, well, look, just come on over and we'll have a chat. And so I showed up in her office in 10 minutes. And we sat down and she said, listen, there's a book called drawing on the right side of the brain. You want to start there. And then you need to build a series of

images and portfolios and art pieces that you can present. And that will get you into school or not. So I head over to Joseph Fox bookstore. I pick up the book and I head directly back home. And I set up some drawing stuff on the table, and I start looking. And it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Bear in mind, I'd never drawn in my life. Wow. All I knew is I want to make art like Michelangelo, Rafael, and Leonardo. And this is, it's a good way to start this podcast because I started at zero.

And then, well, I made a monument that's 60 feet long with 38 figures and weighs 25 tons. And so where else in the world could you follow your dream and your passion and actually get there? And that is what is really wonderful about this country, about the ability to do what you want to do with your life. You don't have to do what your parents did. You could do what you want to do. It's amazing. It is the American dream. I feel I live the American dream every day myself because I'm passionate about what I do.

And it's why it's so frustrating that you hear. many people say that the American dream feels lost to them. And I think with a little hard work, perseverance, you know, you can accomplish whatever you want. Now, you had some, you were born in New York City, you spent time in Italy. So how did you come to, I guess, in some ways, aspire to be an artist in the same vein as so many of these figures that we know throughout history? Well, I had grown up, I was born in New York, and then at three months, we went back to Italy. My mother's Italian, my father's American. And I grew up in Milan, and turn, and at age three we came back, and then every summer would be back in Italy.

So I think that the formative age between one and three really sets your hard drive as an individual, and I was really taken by the visual splendor of Italy because you return to New York. New York is not like a bucolic-looking area. It's not really beautiful. It does have think outside the box anything possible, especially back in the 60s. So that kind of was the formation of who I am as an individual. I love the visual splendor of Europe and the traditions that they carried forth of Western civilization.

And then that mixed with the possibility of anything you want to do, you can do it as long as you set your mind to it. That kind of makes up who I am. When was it that you decided that you would pursue sculpting, particularly working with bronze? Well, at the Philadelphia College of Art, bear in mind now, This is the early 80s, and the art world was still, it had an inkling of tradition. So you had an education which gave you a systematic approach to how to translate life models into sculpture or painting or drawing. So it still had this modicum of traditional education. And I entered into the foundation year and after a foundation year, you have to, you know, you have to make a decision on what,

what's going to be your field of study? And the figurative department in the sculpture room was the strongest, actually, believe it or not, it was the strongest in the whole country. It was run by a man, Walter Earlebacher, who came out of the Bauhaus School, which is antithesis of figurative art, Bauhaus School in Germany.

He'd been, he was a Jew, and his whole family had been, you know, decimated, basically. He was the only survivor. So he showed up in Brooklyn and he was at the Pratt school. And he went on to decide to do figurative art. As soon as he did that, he was booted out of the Whitney as an artist,

which kind of tells you the climate of the times already back in the 80s. So I entered into that program that I went back to Rome. And by the time I finished, I really had a strong basis on how to do it. And this is what's really missing in the art world today. You're working within a structure. It's almost, and to become really, really creative, you need to have rules and ways of operating that are not just like about yourself. You have to make art as universal and understood by the masses. That's the big difference here that traditional Western civilization brings forward.

So I have a very strong connection with the past, but I don't see it as something archaeological. I see it's something that needs to be played forward into the future and developed in a way that speaks about where. we are and who we are at this very moment. And there are so few people probably in your world who are embracing that particular point of view. I know that you, in addition to as you were rolling out the memorial in September, I mean, you were certainly at the center of a lot of attention, shall we say, for good reason. I mean, they were celebrating your art.

But at the same time, do you feel that you're going against the grain because of the way that the art world has moved? It's a really interesting moment. I mean, it's not only happening in the art world, it's happening in all sectors of society. There's this general looking at things and a reevaluation. And is it working or not? And if you look at the art world, the art world comes, it precedes society in a way. So what happened in the art world?

I mean, you go way back. You can go even back to World War I. It's the end of the figurative like tradition because 22 million people are decimated. And so then making figures has a great deal of connection with the concept of God. An image of man is created in this image of God. And so God is no longer relevant because of this horrible death to societal death. It's an alienation of humanity. There's no more sense that there is a divine.

order. It is the nealism that enters. It's a modern era. And so then the figure and art falls off the map and you have, coming out of France like, do shop, he's like a Dadaist. And what does he do? He makes a urinal and he says that is art. So now the artist decides

what is art. And so general public got turned off to art. And they were like, well, why would I want to pay attention to art? It's like, it's crap. And so they just walk away. from it. So we have come now to, oh, it's almost like a full circle. And so that monument that I made a soldier's journey is the next wave. Everything has an opposite reaction in nature and in the art field and in the world. There's always an opposite reaction to what has preceded it. And I firmly believe that we are now moving towards a new renaissance. It's an American cultural.

Renaissance. And it is this rebuilding of values that are sacred and traditional. And it's also a re-evaluation of what do we want to keep and what do we want to move forward. And so the sculpture that I made is not about divisiveness. It's about unification. It's about bringing people together under an umbrella of one flag. And it's frankly, it's the history of our country. And what binds a country together? It's the story of their country. That's their culture. That's what makes an area, a group of people, have a sense of unity because they follow that history. And that's what this sculpture is about. And that's what's actually coming into play. It's a great place if you're not from the Washington, D.C. area and you're planning a trip to the nation's capital, please make it

a stop when you're in Washington, D.C. It's also a fascinating story about how you ended up becoming the sculptor of this. It was a competition. as I understand it and you were selected along with another individual and then obviously a year's long process. Can you take us back to the beginning of that and explain why it was that you wanted to embark on this particular project? Well, imagine this from 1982 till 2015. I'd been making figurative art. I've been very involved in something. I would say it's esoteric. I was very just in love with Greco-Roman tradition, Italian Renaissance tradition. So what is that?

That's the male nude. It's the David, for example. And I realized, after being very stubborn, it did 35 years of it, I trained to a very high level. So I see just like my education. But I realized you're never going to change the art world or you're never going to become present outside of this small esoteric circle. So I entered into a competition Justin Shubow sent me

He's from National Civic Arts Society We've had Justin on one of our other shows The Signal Sit Down, yes? Yeah, and he said, enter this And I'd already had a Frank Gehry had already called me and flown me out to L.A. and asked me if I would be the sculptor for him

and he got a bunch of ideas for me and then because I have very straw and I'm very opinionated. He loved the ideas and then he got rid of me because he didn't want any have any competition on his memorial, which is fine. So I entered this because I wanted to play in a larger arena. And it was really one of the most brutal things I'd ever done because, look, we win the competition in 2016, in January. And then I don't start sculpting until August 2019.

So in between, that's almost four years. In that period, I had to, first I had to win it with a centennial commission. out of a competition with 360 global teams. And then I had to present to Centennial Commission a design that they could go forward to Commission of Fine Arts with, and that took nine months. So I did 25 iterations and took over 12,000 images to capture different poses. So there's 38 poses, but I came up probably with 10,000 poses

and extrapolated the 38 to make that composition. And now you have to enter into the process of Commission of Fine Arts. Now, bear in mind, Commission of Fine Arts is not really happy to see Renaissance figurative art. They're interested, at least the panel that I had to enter and go up against and be judged on trial, so to speak, was a group of, I want to call them glorified gardeners. They were They're not figurative people They're people that are They want to see parks

And now this park that we have won Is being captured by Friedberg was the modernist Who created it And it's now being fought over Between the Centennial Commission And the preservationists That wanted to see this

A modern landscape Cityscape Skitty CityScape Park be maintained. So you have this fighting. So it's not clear if we're going to win or not or if the park's going to be maintained. And so this battle, really, we were blocked

for about two years. And that's one part of it. So wait, just so I have clarity. So you've already won the, you've already been selected among these 360 for the competition. And then you had to go before another commission. Okay, wow.

What a process. And these are landscape architects. Okay. They're not happy to see this, and they like Friedberg's initial park, which had gone into disrepair. And Centennial Commission had been appointed this federal mandate by Congress, signed into effect, that they had to do this memorial in this land. So now you have another fight on your hand. And on top of that, there's fundraising going on because the money is not on the table to make the memorial. So I went out in 2017, raised half a million dollars, and flew to New Zealand.

I was away for nine months, and I shipped back a 10-foot model after I done the drawing first, translated that into a sculpture, and then that entered into commission of fine arts. Well, this went on until, and I'm just going to skip ahead to 2019. We finally got through, very contentious because here we're bringing something very traditional into an arena that is very modern. And so there's this clash. But we do get through. And then now I'm beginning in August of 2019.

And I still have to sculpt this. So it's enlarged at a foundry in the UK outside of Stroud, which is 85 miles west of London. And we begin the process of sculpting and clay. And now we get to 2020. And what happens? There's the pandemic. And so now,

the foundry can't come to mold, so we're shipping the original clays back to the foundry and shipping containers, and I'm continuing to sculpt, and they're casting 3,000 miles away. And so this continues through, we pass through COVID, and it continues through for all the way till January of 2025, where we finished the casting, 24, sorry, and then we have the unveiling and in September, and I swear to you, it was, it's really a miracle that this happened. I guess when you do stuff that is visionary and external to status quo, of course, you're going to hit walls. And I hit some major barricades that really transformed me. I think what happened was I realized how important this sculpture was on so many levels.

And to be in service was something that I really, I didn't have any knowledge of that as an artist. And as I came into the project and saw that I wasn't doing this for myself. This was really for veterans and for my country and for the community and for D.C. There's a whole gamut of things that it's for. It's not for Sabin Howard. This is for others. And I'm in service of also the visitors that come to D.C. To see the history of their country.

That's what the sculpture is for. It's it's for the people. It's a sculpture for we the people. And so, I mean, it does sound like it was a miracle that you were able to have that beautiful unveiling in September. What kept you going? Because, I mean, I've heard you describe, you know, the lawyers you had to go up against and the modernists and others who, you know, didn't like the approach you were taking with the art. You know, at some point, did you ever want to throw your hands up and say no? Or were you committed to seeing this through to your vision as you wanted to sculpt it? That's a great question. The hardest part was going to meetings prior to sculpting because as a sculpture, you're making something with your hands.

constructing your building. And so going to a meeting is not necessarily going to, you know, move the needle. And I don't know if Washington operates like this. This is my experience of it. It's like you go from one meeting to the next meeting. And I think that's part of the process that it becomes very bureaucratic and things take too long to pass through. So I was kind of stuck in this, in this mud. And that was really, really frustrating because I'm used to actually go into a studio every day and using my hands, my head, and my heart to make things. And what pushed me forward so, so I guess vehemently, was the fact that, okay, I had done some pretty damn good sculptures prior to the memorial, but they never got noticed. And I realized that they were not going to be seen

by anyone who was not in the art world itself. And I wanted to make art that was a more external to that small puddle and would become a conductor for the possibility of rising to the occasion in the art world because what does art do? Art is culture, right? And culture actually drives the real world.

So if you have, you've made something that is really special and what does define what special is. It's understood on a universal level, yet it is very unique

to an individual's vision and their own experience as a human being. And so what I did is I used real live models. So every single figure there is the energy. I captured the energy in bronze of an individual, and a lot of those individuals had been in battle. They were veterans that suffered from, let's call it shell shock modern day PTSD. They had that written on their face and their body, and it's in that bronze.

And so that is something that is necessary because it shows how sacred human life is. Okay, it is a war memorial, but ultimately it is memorial to humanity and the strength and courage that it takes to proceed forward in places they're not exactly pleasant. And so the messaging is very heroic. It is self-responsibility. There is no victimization here. It is all about coming together under one flag. And the flag is the highest point on the memorial.

Sabin, if we can just go back for a moment, why did it take so long to construct a memorial for the World War I veterans and to honor their service? I mean, there was so much attention paid to the World War II Memorial and the honor flights and bringing veterans to Washington, D.C. so they can see that monument, you know, before their time on earth, it was gone. But that wasn't the case for World War I. Yeah, World War I is the forgotten war, and especially in this country, less so in Europe, because we lost 116,000 men in that. And we had 4.5 million men shipped overseas. Now, you go to Europe, and it's a completely different thing happening.

22 million people decimated. It is complete destruction of a land. It's destroyed cities, villages, families. Everything is gone. And so the fabric of Europe takes a real beating. We, let's say, figuratively speaking, got a punch on the nose. And then what is Serp's World War I in our country is the Great Depression, which had a greater effect on us in 1929, and then you get this moving into World War II,

where we were really on the world stage. World War I, we were an agrarian nation, and we come back, and it's the beginning of an industrialization. We're beginning our climb on the world stage. But it did not have the same deep impact. And in our country, history has not been really studied as carefully as it should. And so this was a move because of Edwin Fountain

and Centennial Commission, who had two grandparents that were in World War I to make a monument that spoke about this. It's a line in the sand where we depart from the idea of a divine nature of the universe and enter into the modern age. And we are affected greatly still in how we operate today because of World War I.

And I think I'd like to make this point that, yes, it is a memorial to world war one. War I historically, but it is also a memorial to a soldier's journey. So it is understandable still today by any veteran who has been in Iraq or Afghanistan and come back, you know, without a leg or jacked up in the mind. And this is just, it needs to be done where soldiers are given their due because of what they have sacrificed. And so the sculpture is universal in time, historically from 100 years ago to now, to the future as well.

Sabin, I know that your wife documented so much of the process. And I understand that she may be working on a documentary or something that would show just what that was, what that experience was like. Can you share anything that might be forthcoming about the making of this sculpture? Yeah, we, Tracy Slatton, she, she, she filmed every day in the studio and in Stroud at the foundry and in a little bit in the Commission of Fine Arts. And so a lot of footage was captured. And so she's just finishing up now a documentary. It's called Heroic Sabin Howard, the Making of the World War I Memorial. And it should get released in late summer, early fall.

it's a very, very human, intimate look into the studio. And we felt it was really necessary for people to see behind what that bronze, you go to the memorial site and you see the bronze, you see the memorial. But then if you have the information that a human being made that, and how did he make that, that's never been done before, especially for a national monument, you can see how my hands, actually put the clay on. And this is a part that's necessary

that we return to the concept that human beings make things, construct things. They don't only destroy things. This is about building. And it's a very important moment culturally that we go back to the concept that human beings matter

and that they actually have a very positive influence. They can have a very positive influence in proceeding forward. And the concept of rising to the occasion can be seen in the movie because I had to become the man who made that memorial. I was not ready when I entered into that project. I came out a very different person than back in 2015, back nine and a half years ago. Well, I'm so glad that Tracy and you had the idea to do that. And I look forward to certainly seeing that when it's a finished product.

You know, Tracy and you are also the author of a book on art. I know that, you know, you've visited schools. Are you hopeful about the future? Or, I mean, is there, is there, do you think that you indicated earlier that we may be in a renaissance? Leave us, you know, with some feelings of those who aren't, you know, in the art world on a day-to-day basis. What the state is right now and what you're trying to do to make sure the next generation is inspired by your work. I am hopeful in many ways. I think that there's a lot of stuff happening right now.

The art school that I went to, out of business, personally. It's gone. And why is it gone? Because it was not teaching young arts students how to become professional artists. And so there's a lot of like, well, I don't really care about the art world. So it's not being paid attention to as, it's a very elite system right now that's run through Sotheby's. And you have a small group of very, very high end artists, the high end is high value, high net worth. It's not about high sacred values. And general public is not fooled. It's the emperor's new clothes syndrome where they look at art and they're like, well, this is, I don't get it. And why would you get it? There's nothing

to get it. It's a giant scam. But the thing that struck me when I put the memorial in, and I think this is the thing that really gave back to me the most, was, was, how much general public, just people that are not artificiados, would go to Pershing Park, and then they would have great reverence when they were looking at a soldier's journey. And I felt that that was a litmus test, that I had done something right, that I had done something that would bring people together and elevate their spirit, because that is what my vision of what art should do. starting October 20th, 1982, on that day that I went and bought that art book

drawing on the right side of the brain. That's the vision that I had. Let's make art like what was going on in the Italian Renaissance that brought communities together and elevated their spirit. So there is great hope, but I need to, I'm now in Salt Lake and I need to make another piece for our 250th birthday, which is coming up on obviously July 4th. So I need to make a history monument. The Grand Liberty Arch Project, that's what I'm calling it, which is the history of our country.

And it's something to have pride in. And that is the direction that we're going in. It's an elevating rise to the occasion history. We should be prideful of this. Is that going to be on display in Salt Lake? I don't know yet. I'm organizing it. We're pulling it forward.

Nobody has stepped up and said, let's make a monument that speaks well of us and redefines us as a historical cultural symbol of today, I want to make something that is in the wheelhouse of Mount Rushmore Statue of Liberty that is a destination monument. And I believe it will be in Salt Lake. I'm being accepted here. So this is where it's going to go. And so that is the next mission, the next assignment. So after spending much of your life on the East Coast, you've decided to make the track out west. And what does that mean, though, for your studio and, and, you know, the various things, the life that you had there in Connecticut? As an artist, I think you have to, you finish giant projects and you have to redefine yourself.

You have to begin again. And it's not a pleasant journey. It's a journey of creation. And so the thing that struck me and what my life has been about, has been not being in a box about what's the possibility of your life, the gift that God has given you, this terminal energy. What are you going to do with the last third of your life? I'm 62. And so I felt this calling to make something that is about freedom, about what is possible. And I saw the history of our nation. is just so ripe with the possibility of all these people that have fought violently to maintain that freedom. And then we get to the last few years, and it's like our country is like, that freedom is not acknowledged, it's not celebrated. And so this is my choice.

And with great determination, I'm going forward to make a monument that speaks about our freedom. And I really believe that this is the only place in the whole world where you could actually manifest and become what your desires and passions drive you to be. And so this is a freedom monument. And the West, what is it? It's about expansion. Moving West. Go West, boy. Here I am.

There you are. Save an hour. How can people find out more about you and your sculptures and if they wanted to see some of your work? Where's the best place to send them? Well, I'm on Sabin Howard.com, and you can find me on X. Again, Saban Howard or Instagram, Saban Howard's sculpture. And please write me if you have a question. I always respond.

Well, thank you for spending the time with The Daily Signal. We're honored to showcase your work and the fact that it's just down the street from me in Washington, D.C. is a real treat. And again, I hope people make the trip and have a look for themselves because it truly is inspiring. Sabin Howard? Appreciate your work. Thank you very much, Rob. We are going to leave it there for today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from The Daily Signal.

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