The Meriwether Academy PodcastEpisode 7
Episode 7 · November 3, 2026 · 50 min
A Soldier’s Journey: Sabin Howard on Sculpting the National WWI Memorial
Sabin Howard walked out of a cabinet shop at 19 and spent the next four decades learning to sculpt the human figure. He explains how he made the 58-foot bronze at the heart of the National World War I Memorial, and why he believes art must serve something larger than the artist.
A Soldier's Journey at the National WWI Memorial. Courtesy of Sabin Howard Studio.
Our Guest
Sabin Howard
Sabin Howard is one of America’s leading figurative sculptors. He trained at the Philadelphia College of Art and the New York Academy of Art, studied in Rome, and taught for 20 years. He sculpted A Soldier’s Journey, the 58-foot bronze relief at the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., unveiled in September 2024. The making of the memorial is the subject of the documentary Heroic, directed by his wife, Traci L. Slatton. His next project is the Grand Liberty Arch.
In This Episode
A few blocks from the White House stands one of the most ambitious works of public sculpture made in America in generations. A Soldier’s Journey is 58 feet long, has 38 figures, and is cast in more than 25 tons of bronze. It is the largest freestanding bronze relief in the Western Hemisphere and the centerpiece of the National World War I Memorial. In this episode of the Meriwether Academy Podcast, Warren Steury talks with the man who sculpted it, Sabin Howard.
Howard trained at the Philadelphia College of Art and the New York Academy of Art, studied in Rome, taught for 20 years, and has spent more than 45,000 hours working from live models. The conversation covers how he became an artist, the near decade it took to bring the memorial to life, the story the relief tells, and what he hopes men and boys will take from it.
A Late Start at 19
Howard did not begin art until he was 19. He remembers the exact moment: 4:00 on October 22, 1982. He was working in a cabinet-making shop in South Philadelphia when he decided, “I’m wasting my life. I need to get a purpose.” He walked out, called the Philadelphia College of Art from a pay phone, and asked how to get into art school. When the woman on the line said he needed a portfolio, he did not know what a portfolio was.
He believes starting from zero may have helped. “I had nothing to unlearn except what I thought great art was,” he said. His mother is Italian, and he spent his earliest years in Turin and Milan, surrounded by piazzas, monuments, and churches, and by the work of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Then the family moved to New York City in 1966, where he saw veterans living on the street in the middle of Broadway. Splendor and disruption, he says, formed him.
Out of that came a conviction about America: “You do not need to be what your parents were. It’s free will, agency, and self-responsibility.” His mission since has been to make sculpture that “is not archaeological, but it takes the past and it plays it forward” for people who never set foot in an art museum.
Learning From the Old Masters
Howard reads the lives of the old masters as practical guides, not just history. Michelangelo faced the same kinds of problems he faced: making something enormous and enduring opposition to it. Critics called Michelangelo’s nudes heresy and wanted them torn down. “It’s not new,” Howard said. “It’s not like this has never happened before.”
He also thinks our age has an advantage the Renaissance lacked: technology at our fingertips. The condition is remembering “that it’s just a tool and that the human directs the technology.”
Winning the Commission, and the Fight That Followed
In 2014 Justin Shubow, who appears on another episode of this podcast, called Howard and urged him to enter the competition for a national World War I memorial. His first entry did not make the final five, but he told his wife it wasn’t over. Soon after, a 25-year-old architect named Joseph Weishaar emailed to ask if he would partner with him. “I picked up the phone and called him right away,” Howard said. After five meetings, the pair were awarded the project: Howard to sculpt, and Weishaar to design the architecture and landscape of the park.
Then the real work began. At one of the first meetings Howard asked about payment and was told, in his paraphrase, “This is a national monument and we have no money.” He spent about nine months on design iteration, shooting roughly 12,000 photographs of models in period uniforms and producing 25 versions. He drew the final concept from November 2015 to February 2016 and presented it to the Commission of Fine Arts, which accepted it as a concept.
With no funding for the next step, Howard raised half a million dollars himself and sculpted a 10-foot, three-dimensional version of the relief in New Zealand. When the crate was opened in Washington, he said, “I made a bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats and DC politicians cry.” The Commission of Fine Arts still turned the design back, and the review dragged on until 2019. In his account, the commission would have accepted a memorial of landscape, water, trees, and park benches, “but they were not okay with something that was so heroic in its nature and its message.”
He began full-scale sculpting in August 2019 and kept working straight through COVID, shipping sections to a foundry in the United Kingdom. Each figure was sculpted from life and averaged 650 hours of work.
The Story the Bronze Tells
The relief’s structure came from a breakfast conversation with his wife, the author and filmmaker Traci Slatton. She told him he was telling the hero’s journey, Joseph Campbell’s pattern of a protagonist who leaves home, enters a great conflict, is transformed, and returns to share what he learned.
Read left to right, A Soldier’s Journey follows one father, who is also an allegory for the American soldier:
- The leaving. He parts from his daughter, who is “the alpha and the omega” of the whole panel. Howard’s own daughter posed for her over a four-year period, the length of the war.
- The pull. His wife holds him back by one arm while a brotherhood of soldiers pulls him forward into battle.
- The charge. At the center he leads the attack, mouth open in a scream.
- The cost. A pietà scene and a nurse holding up a gassed man. Howard’s other daughter, a doctor, posed as the nurse.
- The shell-shocked soldier. The focal point of the composition: the father stops and steps out toward the viewer, his face in turmoil, with a fallen crucifix on the wall behind him.
- The return. Soldiers carry the American flag, the highest point on the monument, and the father comes home to hand his helmet to his daughter. She is the next generation, World War II.
The models from the midpoint onward are actual veterans. Howard wanted the relief to feel like “a bronze movie.”
“There Are No Victims Here. They Are All Heroes.”
At the unveiling Howard said of the figures, “There are no victims here. They are all heroes.” Warren asked him what he meant, and his answer is a philosophy of life as much as of art.
Working with soldiers taught him two things. First, “you get knocked down, get up and move,” because soldiers are taught to go forward. Second, a soldier is part of a group, “in service of something bigger than yourself.” Midway through the project he came to see the memorial that way: in service of his country, of veterans, and of the schoolchildren who are dropped off at the park by the busload.
The Unveiling and the Weight of Speaking
The memorial was unveiled at a candlelit ceremony in September 2024, with about a thousand people seated in the park and more gathered around it. Howard says the unveiling changed him. He had always wanted to stay in the studio sculpting from life. Now he understood that he also had to explain what he had made, “because then others can understand its value.”
That conviction runs through the documentary Heroic, directed by Slatton, which follows the making of the memorial. Everything in the shop was filmed, and Howard calls the result real, “a little gritty,” and fast moving at 99 minutes. He hopes viewers will talk about it, because “culture defines” us, and a nation is held together by its stories. “If you take their stories away, that’s your identification,” he warned. “It’s the knowledge that you are part of something larger than yourself.”
A Message for Men and for Boys
Asked what he wants men to take from his Nashville talk, Howard was direct: “We’re providers. We’re creators. We’re builders.” He points to his own life as a father of two daughters as much as to his monuments, and he rejects the idea of “toxic masculinity” as a tool for tearing families apart.
For teenage boys, his advice is physical as well as intellectual. “Sitting in a classroom is not always the best thing for a boy,” he said. Get into nature, see that there is something bigger than yourself, build things, and think outside the box. And listen to your father, because “that dad will not be there someday.” The passing on of what is possible, he says, “is a stewardship.”
Meet Sabin Howard in Nashville
Howard comes to Nashville for The Return of the Hero, Meriwether Academy’s evening with the sculptor on Saturday, December 12, at the Belmont Mansion, with a private screening of Heroic for VIP guests on Friday, December 11. He is already at work on his next monument, the Grand Liberty Arch.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What is A Soldier's Journey?
A Soldier’s Journey is the bronze relief sculpture by Sabin Howard at the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C. It is 58 feet long, has 38 figures, is cast in more than 25 tons of bronze, and is the largest freestanding bronze relief in the Western Hemisphere.
When was the National WWI Memorial sculpture unveiled?
A Soldier’s Journey was unveiled in September 2024 at a candlelit ceremony at the memorial in Washington.
What story does A Soldier's Journey tell?
It follows the hero’s journey of one father, who is also an allegory for the American soldier: he leaves his daughter, is pulled into battle, leads the charge, suffers the cost of war, and returns home to hand his helmet to his daughter, the next generation.
How long did it take to make A Soldier's Journey?
Nearly a decade, from the 2014 competition through years of design and review to full-scale sculpting that began in August 2019. Each figure was sculpted from life and averaged about 650 hours.
What is Heroic?
Heroic is a documentary directed by Traci L. Slatton about the making of the memorial. It runs 99 minutes.
Is Sabin Howard speaking in Nashville?
Yes. Meriwether Academy hosts The Return of the Hero with Sabin Howard on Saturday, December 12, 2026, at the Belmont Mansion, with a private VIP screening of Heroic on Friday, December 11.
Read the full transcript
Auto-generated captions from the episode, lightly edited for names. Select a timestamp to jump to that moment in the video.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Meriwether Academy podcast. My name is Warren Steury, the president of Meriwether Academy. We are an educational nonprofit based in Nashville, uh, that hosts events for men and boys focused around the arts, culture, literature, and the outdoors with a goal to build a boy school here in Tennessee. Our guest on this podcast is a a very special gentleman. If you've ever been to Washington DC, just a few blocks from the White House, you might have seen a massive bronze sculpture. It's 58 ft long and it has 38 figures on it. It's cast in over 25 tons of metal and it tells the story of an American soldier who leaves home, goes to war, and returns. It's also the largest freestanding bronze relief in the Western Hemisphere. Now, the man who sculpted that is our guest on the podcast today. His name is Sabin Howard. He's one of the leading
figurative sculptures in America. He trained at the Philadelphia College of Art in the New York Academy of Art. He also was educated in Rome and he taught for 20 years. and he has spent more than 45,000 hours working from live models. In 2016, his design was chosen for more than 350 blind entries for the National World War I Memorial. He spent nearly a decade bringing it to life. And now that sculpture, which is titled A Soldier's Journey, sits in Washington DC and was unveiled in September 2024. The story of him creating that monument is the subject of a documentary, Heroic, directed by his wife, Traci Slatton. And now he's already at work on his next monument, the Grand Liberty Arch. The reason for this podcast is that on December 12th, Sabin is coming to Nashville, Tennessee for an event with
Meriwether Academy, where we will discuss art, beauty, heroism, and what all of this might have cost us when our culture and our country turned away from these ideals. Sabin, thank you very much for your time today, and it is very exciting to have you come to Nashville. Uh, I'm honored, Warren. Thank you for having me on today. getting to your origin story would would be fun. You were a believe you were a cabinet maker uh and you left that at 19 years old. How did you get into doing sculpture? The the choice was determined by the vision that I held. And I didn't begin art till I was 19. It happened at 4:00 on October 22nd, 1982. I quit my job and I walked out of that cabinet making shop in South Philly called from a pay phone the Philadelphia College of Art and asked them how do I get into art school and she the the lady on the other end said well you need a
portfolio and just to let you know I didn't know what a portfolio was that's where I started it at at a complete zero maybe it was better that I started there because I had nothing to unlearn except what I thought great art was. I'd come out of Italy, my mother's Italian. I grew up there. I was surrounded by the visual splendor of Leonardo and Michelangelo and Raphael. And so that moment at 4:00, I was like, I'm wasting my life. I need to get a purpose. And made the phone call and it began that very moment. And it hasn't stopped till this second at all. Beautiful. Now, you've talked about how your artistic education came from both America uh and Europe, specifically Italy. Could you kind of talk about the time you spent in these places and what you learned from these different styles and maybe what certain ones offered you that uh other ones weren't able to?
Well, so if you if you think about it, your first years are formative. That's how your brain and your visuals and your perception of reality gets created. And here I am in in Torino and Milan and I'm surrounded by incredible things that you don't see in this country. I mean, piazas and monuments and churches and um columns with porticos and all of these things had a deep impact if for a little two two-year-old kid walking around and all of a sudden we get yanked up and we head back to New York City. Okay, so this is now 1966. Think about it. Vietnam War and these urban centers on the east coast are being ravaged by very similar to what's going on right now. This anti-ultural movement and you end up seeing these things that as a little kid have also a deep visceral impact on you. I'm like walking across the street and I'm in Broadway and in the middle of the median are these homeless people. A lot of them
were veterans. Um they were junkies and alcoholics and this is shocking. So it's it it's a it's kind of like these two forces come together. Visual splendor and then this incredible sense of disruption. But out of that disruption, there's something really unique about our country. It's the ability to be whatever you want to be. You do not need to be what your parents were. It's free will, agency, and self-responsibility. The three-year-old kid doesn't know it, but you're thrown into that. And that's kind of the formation of modern and traditional. And that's who I am. And I my mission has been to make art, sculpture specifically, that is not archaeological, but it takes the past and it plays it forward in a way that's very contemporary and understandable by people that don't go to art museums,
general populace. Art represents who we are. And it's it's been a a growing path. It's not an easy path but it is definitely a path of moving towards higher consciousness. Yeah. You know you talking about having no artistic experience when you were 19 and then all of a sudden you made this decision to go and pursue this. I think that that is the epitome of what you just described which is the uh the American ethos where you really can't craft yourself uh through uh through a dream a vision. Yeah. This is what this is what separates us from the rest of the world. We are taught that sometimes the attitude is more important than the facts. And it leaves us with the ability to step into the void. And when when you have that yes, I can do it attitude,
your dreams can be turned into reality, but it takes work to get there. And this is it's very critical that we maintain that with the same thing that you're doing with your school and this concept that we teach and steward into the future. Our children's they're the next generation. They are what America will be so that the liberties that we have had this gift for the last 250 years can can how is it going to play out for the next 250 years? So my art takes on a whole different significance of not just being art in the ghetto of a museum like ostracized behind these white walls, but it goes into like interface with the real world. And so that's that's where we need to really do something now at this moment, not wait till like next year or the year after. It's like now, now's the moment to react.
And I think another big part of this equation uh which you brought up is we need role models. And you talked about some of the the masters, Michelangelo and such that inspired you. Could you talk about some of your artistic masters and what you appreciate in their work and how you've kind of embodied what they do? Well, thank you for asking me that. Look, I I have read so many books on these people that I I saw not as his only as historical figures, but also as they're they're they're people that I could look to for information of like how do I deal with the problems of making something so large and facing opposition to it. And it's the same thing, different floor. It's Michelangelo had the same sort of problems dealing with the pope and having enemies to what he wished to create and doing something frankly that was very radical creating nudes not only with the the David but also with the last judgment and there were many people that wished to tear it down. It called
it heresy and we we face the same sort of things today. It's not new. It's not like this has never happened before. This sort of like destruction and protest against light and truth and and and moving towards something of higher value that was going on 500 600 years ago as well. It's the same thing. And and so if you read about what they passed through, I mean, I think I'm pretty lucky I don't have somebody trying to chase me down and kill me today. At least not yet. So it it's it's incredible. It's it I I I think that we live in an a really never happened before age where we have so much technology at our fingertips and if you are able to harness it as a tool and remember that it's just a tool and that the human directs the technology we're we would be able to create things of enormous and epic splendor. That's that's what's coming from my shop.
That's what we are going to do. Yeah. Beautiful. Now the monument in Washington. Could you talk about Well, what was the submission process like? It was I think it was 2016. You you make this submission and then uh it's a blind submission and you're chosen to do this monument. Talk about kind of the time leading up to that. How early did you hear about the contest? How much time did you have to put your design together? Some of those early details. So, picture this. Uh, it's back in 2014 and I've spent the last 35 years um sculpting in in dark studios in South Bronx and East Harlem. And so, every day I would sculpt from life models and do something that was pretty esoteric. It really came out of Greek and Roman sculpture. I I I got a call from Justin Shubow. Um, hey, Sabin, this World War
I Memorial is something you need to apply to. So, I did and it was 2014 in the summer and I I I applied. We didn't make the the final five. But I I knew it wasn't over and I told my wife that. And sure enough, on September 14th, I got this email from this kid. He was really a kid, 25 years old, Joseph Weishaar, and he was like, "Would you partner with me?" I picked up the phone and called him right away. I think he was shocked that I called him. And we got through the process. It was five meetings that led all the way up to January of 2015. And in January, uh, we were awarded, um, the right for me to sculpt the World War I memorial and him to design in Pershing Square Park, the architecture and landscape. And it begins and it's like, but it's not what you think. It's like you you would think, oh my god, the this guy won the lottery. Yeah. Well, I go to some of my first meetings and I the one of them my questions is to the commission,
Centennial Commission. All right. So, uh let's sit down and discuss uh payment, right? Because you're going into a job and you can't do other jobs and like we don't have any money. This is a national monument and we have no money. So, this was the first fight. We got past that hurdle and then it begins nine months of iteration. So, The application only got me the project. Now we go through an iteration process of nine months. So I take 12,000 pictures of different poses with models in my shop dressed in the uniforms of the era. And along with that I do 25 different iterations. And finally in November, Edwin Fountain, who was a commissioner who was watching what I was doing, met with me at a Barnes & Noble bookstore at Union Square in New York City just before Thanksgiving and said, "Okay, we're
finally there." And and so then I did a drawing from November of 2015 till February of 2016 that was then presented to the Commission of Fine Arts. This is the next gatekeeper. The Commission of Fine Arts grudgingly accepts the drawing as a concept that they could work with and then you know the next step is make a sculpture. Centennial Commission doesn't have funding. So I the project would have died. So I go out and I raise half a million dollars and I take that funding all the way to New Zealand to wet a workshop and beginning that summer and running all the way to February I sculpt a 10-foot version three-dimensional of a soldier's journey. I ship this back to Washington to the Centennial Commission. Centennial Commission opens the crate and I made a
bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats and DC politicians cry. They could not believe what they saw and they were firmly behind it. We go back to Commission of Fine Arts for its presentation and I get basically shot down. The process begins there again. that goes on all the way till 2019 when we get through that door. It was very very difficult to deal with a commission that was not in favor of a figurative piece of art that was okay with the project if it was something that was driven by landscape and water trees, park benches. But they were not okay with something that was so heroic in its nature and its message. But we broke through that door. I begin sculpting in 2019 in August.
And this takes us through right through CO. We don't stop. And we figured out how to ship things overseas to a foundry in the UK in containers. And we we came in at the very end at the the very end of 23 was like January 8th that we shipped the last scene of four figures to the foundry. Been shipping we shipped six times and my wife Traci Slatton documented this which is incredible. It's going to be on a film and you guys are going to be able to see it in in Nashville. you're going to be some of the first people to see the inside look on on what we did and what actually transpired. Um it's it's not public yet. This is a private screening. Um so this is very very very excited that Tracy will come along and share it with you and in come January this will go public. This will go global this story.
Yeah. Over 4,000 hours of footage I I believe is what went into this documentary. Is that right? Yeah, it's it's um everything was filmed, so you're going to see things that nobody has seen and um the the the video was running all the time. So, it's like the shop's not paying attention to the cameras. It's just running. So, it's it's not like it's scripted. It's not it it's real. Um and it's a little gritty. I I think Tracy had to edit out all the f-words and s words that I said. I think it was she when she edited I think it was over 200 and that's just on the on the hour and a half. So it's like I have a potty mouth and it really I mean it's like you're under stress. You come through. You have no choice. You know how important this is for an artist that's been pushing a rock up a hill for 35 years and then you get a break like this and you think I'm going to fail. Hell no. This is this is like there's a crack in a door. You're going to bust that
door down. And and that's the way I feel about this. It's like yeah, you're not going to stop this. And it's there's so many times in this process that I think a lot of other people would have quit, packed it up, and gone home. But it's like if you if you do that, you don't become the man that you can be. Yeah. Talk more about that about, you know, the value of persistence. And, you know, I would imagine that in a lot of ways, at least in my life, you you really have to have this almost delusional uh willing to just like go for it. what what kept you going through this whole process and how did you change as a man overcoming all these roadblocks? I mean I I we started talking in the beginning about this it's attitude and I I look it everything's pointing to like no it's not going to happen. So there there are two aspects here of perception and they they go like this like everything is always like an an opposite force but
it's part of the situation you know there's the realist that's the person who's tied into all the facts and the way reality is and then there's the person who's looking at like what if like the Elon Musk maybe I'm the Elon Musk of the sculpture world it's like what if I'm going to think about like why can we not make art as grand as a cysteine chapel today. That's that's what's going on in my head. So that's going to take a little bit of work here and it takes up quite a bit of clarity, clarity of vision. Italian art like the cyine chapel or the medi tomb or the amazing elements of European western civilization are not something that I saw as of the past because when I walked in to these places as a little kid even though I had zero interest of like following in those
footsteps as a kid my parents both being PhDs they were like going to make me go look at this stuff cuz They wanted to look at it and you're tagging along and it would change me in in my chest viscerally chemically. You would have an all chemical reaction. So it wasn't like something that was external. It was not like this thing in a book that's completely in your head. It was an all body experience where it's head and heart. And those are the kind of things that emotionalize things and make them real because those feelings you're having are in the moment. So we still have those same sort of feelings of being elevated, of potentiality. And if you're entering into like a St. Peter's, you're completely blown away by the grandeur and the epic nature of it. It's visual. We see everything through our eyes. It's it's like 80% of information goes through our brain through our eyes. That was where I came from. And so I I to make something was like let's make
something of this level because okay so I have a big vision. I want to change the direction of art history. I want to rip it out of the claws of Jeff Coons and Damian Hurst who have like taken it and made it into like how much is the art worth financially and put it into a different context of how much is the art worth on a sacred level. going back to the caves of Lascow where the the prehistoric cave paintings were a matter of existence and seeing the light of the next day. I see it the same way. It's seeing the light of the next day. What can we be being our best version? That's why that's that's the why. I I I don't ever want to go back to having to work in a dark, dingy shop in South Harlem or or the South Bronx. I know what the darkness and the crappy parts of our country look like. There's nothing redeeming about them. I want to go to a place of elevated consciousness, of
limitless potential. That's I don't want to repeat where I came from. That's why I'm making something like this. You You obviously have developed an incredible mindset from early on through this entire process and you also have an incredible wife. Yes, she is. Could you talk about working with Tracy in the studio, on the monument, on the documentary, and how this relationship has really changed and uh influenced this whole process for you? I I um I I'll go back to my childhood because that's your formative years. it the the traditional Italian family that I came from and that I was surrounded by saw who had more power in a family. Believe it or not, it was the woman. The woman or the wife
would be the person that turned the head of the husband or the male in the right direction and would point him in the direction that he should put his energies in. and then he would execute. So this sort of symbiosis because it's like male and female was very clear back in the 60s and so you there's this like if you didn't follow what your wife suggested there was trouble at home and the that aspect I met somebody Tracy um 20 26 years ago and it changed my life because she brought to me a vocabulary about the philosophy of energies and how we are as human beings as light beings. This is not woohoo. This is very very spiritual um consciousness about potentiality of each and every one of us. And I was fascinated by what she our conversations because they they were from the first day we met we spoke for five hours and
she brought up uh Bernini and and and Santa Teresa and at that point I was like oh yeah this is pretty cool and this woman it let's put it this way she's a best-selling author uh she wrote Immortal and published all over the world in Europe as well 12 different novels and Then she joins my project because we need to keep our family together. And here she she's we make a deal. The deal was you be the project manager for this pro for this and then you can make a documentary. So she switches art forms completely starts at zero and makes something that is getting into the Newport Beach Film Festival. Incredible. And she did another documentary prior to it that won 30 awards. So the documentation of what I'm doing is is done by somebody who understands story and this again is something that I learned from her.
Story is what binds us not only as families, stories about our family but also stories about country bind us. And we are in a place today where if you destroy or protest against those stories like what's going on with all this tearing down that you're seeing, it's a way to destroy and separate us and alien alienate us from each other. Dismpempowering because you don't belong to anything larger than yourself. It's very neolistic. It's it's incredibly intelligent tactics if you want to destroy a country, a culture, and a society just to rip the fabric apart. If you take their stories away, that's your identification. It's it's the knowledge that you are part of something larger than yourself. It's very critical to human well-being. So she wrote a story about this making of the monument that
can be brought to the public and made interesting. It's it's it's again it's not something that's boring. It's not talking heads that are completely cerebral. It's something that is like exciting, dramatic, and slightly a bit, you know, it's it's runchy a little bit. It's not it's like guys in a shop making something. Yeah. It it Yeah, you know on on story uh the idea of story the monument itself tells a story. Could you talk about what story it tells and kind of describe some of the details and the uh elements that you worked into this physical story. Again, I got to kudos to Tracy because I was like assembling this thing and I started the first iterations. Um, and we're the way I worked it was like we would I would get the models up on the podium in my in my shop with turn all the lights and we have one spotlight
like a stage like a theatrical stage and you and we're making up like movements. they were not cohesive this what was going on but the general idea was there already from the first the first um shooting and um one morning at breakfast Tracy goes hey you know you're telling the hero's journey and I was like what's that Joseph Campbell the hero's journey and the hero's journey is um a circular voyage and that's what the the solders's journey is so it's about a protagonist that leaves leaves home, enters into a major conflict, is transformed, and then returns home to spread that wisdom with um his society. That's what that's what the soldier's journey is. It's a dad uh who's also an allegory for the United States soldier. And the first scene on the left is he leaves his daughter and his family.
The alpha and omega, the whole 58 foot panel are the daughter. She is the alpha and the omega. And it was actually my daughter who posed for it over a four-year period, which is how long World War I lasted. So she kicks it off. The next scene is the dad is in a tugof-war. He's being pulled apart, ripped apart by his wife who's holding him back by an arm. And on the other side, he's being pulled forward by this brotherhood of arms being pulled into battle. The next scene is the battle scene. And now you reach all the way to the middle and the dad is leading that charge forward in this like very kinetic animalistic charge with his mouth open in a in a giant scream. And what follows next is the cost of war where you have a pieta scene and you have a nurse who is holding up a ghast
man and then the dad again. Now this is the very focal point of the whole composition walking directly out at you. He's everything at this point and the whole thing has been going forward moving into the future. And this guy stops and he is taking a step out towards you. He is this shell shocked dad and soldier. His face is in turmoil. And it is this moment that Nietzsche talks about is God dead? And on the back wall to his left is a fallen crucifix to portray the symbol of those 22 million people that were decimated. And humanity asked itself, what is the purpose? Why are we here? If there is God, why would this happen to the world? It's it's a tormented moment that has affected us till now. And then after that you go to a return home scene with um uh
three soldiers returning a flag that is the highest point on the monument, the American flag. And then the final scene where the dad returns home to hand his daughter the helmet. And this is a stressful moment. Her head is looking down at the helmet. It's open now. It's facing upwards. What's the question is like why is she holding it? Because she's the next generation. She is World War II. And it it is a very human sculpture. The models are veterans from the midpoint till the end. They're actual real veterans because it's the same thing 100 years later. They are facing those same emotional conflicts re-entering into society. And all the figures were sculpted from life and average 650 hours. And it it there's there's nothing generic here. And it's it's dramatic. It's supposed to be like a bronze movie. Superheroes.
Now you you described violence and there's suffering and there's the image of a nurse holding a man who has been gassed. Yet at the unveiling, and this is my favorite quote, you said, "There are no victims here. They are all heroes." Yeah. Could you talk about what you meant by that and elaborate a little bit? When you make art, obviously your perception of reality drives the engine. My perception has been success is derivative of the concept that everything that happens to you that is unpleasant will only make you stronger. It is a blessing that you must take on and proceed so that you can be your best version. And if you start looking at it
as this like pity party, you don't get anything done. It's just a matter of like, oh, woe is me. What is that going to do for you? That takes away your power. It's empowering to look at it. I mean, this is a this is like you put your mind into this position of like, okay, I'm going to deal. How do I hit the ball in the hole? Not like I missed. Oh, damn. Oh, God. What am I going to do now? It's like, "No, hit the ball in the freaking hole and and and then it you're you're on the this movement forward." It's very interesting being around these soldiers did two things. It's I learned something that I've been doing for years, like you get knocked down, get up and move. Doesn't matter where you move, just go forward. And soldiers are taught that the biggest word in in in their survival is go forward. Don't just sit there and be t take all these pot shots. Attack.
Go forward. Go towards what's firing at you. And that's what I've been doing all these years. And the other thing was like if you are in a group of soldiers, you have reinforcement. There will be people that come and and you're bigger. They're bigger than you. It's not just you. you're in service of something bigger than yourself. And I learned that I was in service of something way larger than myself in this project. Those are the two elements that I learned from those soldiers. And that's I took that vision that had already been going on. And mid mid- project, it became even more clear to me that I was in service of my country. I was in service of all the veterans. I was in service of all the kids that come look at that thing that the all the school buses that get dumped off at Pershing Park that that we need to learn the history the right way, not this thing that we're supposed to be ashamed of being Americans. That's a load of hoie and bull crap. It's like what is that going to do for you except put a bunch of kids in a therapist office and remember that there is a God that he's that he is your maker and we are made in his image. And that's what
like I took out of that project. And it's like no matter how evil DC was, that still represents who we are. It's 150 yards from the White House. I don't want to be represented as a weak country that doesn't have any potential. So it's like, okay, I'm going to fight even harder. It's just kind of like in my in in it's in my soul. It's in my nature. I'm not one to to take it and lay lay down like a dog and roll over. It's like that's not happening. 100%. Now, in September of 2024, this is almost a decade after you first touched this project. Yeah. At Pershing Park, this monument is unveiled. Could you talk about the ceremony and what that felt like seeing this whole uh journey that you went on finally come to fruition in its final form? There are two aspects of this. The unveiling um changed me again. It was a candle lit
ceremony with I believe a thousand people within the park and over 1,500 2,000 around the park that because it was you know a seated um event and there was a candle light ceremony that began I think it was 7:14 which was when the sun sets. Um, and all those candles were lit in unison. And it's the way we should be to respect, to honor that which has come before us, that has had value, that has outlasted. And what we what we were honoring was not only the sculpture, but the the men and women that went off for the first time ever across the Atlantic, but also our military today because they have also experienced that soldier's journey.
And so it's a final chapter in some ways for me to become more than just an artist in a studio operating by himself making his own art. No, now I'm making art for something way larger than myself. So my purpose was exponential. And then there's another part of me that was like, I just want to be in the studio making art with my hands. I just want to be in process, but that's not my life. I'm supposed to speak about what I've done. And that was a new thing because now it's like I'm not only making the art, but I'm also speaking about what its meaning is. And that's not what I had expected. I had always wanted to be in the studio sculpting from life models, not to be bothered with public and discussion and talking. But it's important that I speak about what I've done because then others can understand its value. And I I I
feel all too often artists go down in their they burrow down into their studio hole and they bury their head in the sand like an ostrich and they don't look at the reality of the world around them. Oh, I've had a good look at what's out there and you get thrown into a project like this and it's no longer just making art. It's like, why is the art important? Why do people people hate what I did? I mean, I have enemies. There's definitely enemies that don't like this sort of vision because it's like very clear uh demarcation of the nature of men, demarcation of women. It's incredible that today you don't you have this like if you ask what can you define a woman and it's like people can't even define what a woman is. It's like honestly there it's so clear what a man is and what a woman is and you should be proud of that and I'm not I have nothing against you know if you're gay that's
fine. You were born into that. That's that's not your choice. That's what you were handed by God. And so you shouldn't denigrate that, but you shouldn't make that into your first identity of like my how what are you? Oh, I am straight, I am gay. No, your first identity is you were made by God. So that unifies us. Then your second identity is your your family and that you are are American and and you could be any you can come from any place on the planet. Look, I'm my mother was from Italy and my my my dad's family came from Germany. It's like it's not like this is what the United States is. It's a melting melting pot. It's like a giant to be successful. You are like a a let's say a sport a soccer team where you have people from all different parts of the world and they come and they operate as a unit and they go forward. And that's what makes a successful soccer team. That should be the model for our country, not this nonsense of like everybody's going in different directions like hurting cats.
It's it's going to take us down. So that that's what that monument taught me that honor honor all humanity, but remember that there is good and evil and there is objective truth. That's what it taught me. Now, the event that we're doing in Nashville, it's a a two-part event. On Friday, we have this is Friday, December the 11th. We have a a private screening of the documentary Heroic to a a small group. And then Saturday, we have you giving a talk and presenting your journey and some of your ideas to a gathering of of men. It's a a men's event Saturday evening at the Belmont Mansion. Uh on Friday, what are you hoping that guests who come and see this film and talk to Tracy and you afterwards? What are you hoping that the guests of the film screening in particular uh take away from that experience?
Well, thank you for asking that. this this movie that Tracy made is um it it shows how something's made, how it's built, and it's it's a story that's dramatic. And I saw it for the first time in Newport Beach Film Festival. I was kind of shocked. First of all, I had to I had to relive the nine and a half years that I it's I didn't really want to go there. Yeah, but it it was like uh it's 99 minutes. I thought the movie Well, that wait that was like an hour. That was an hour and 10. flows so quickly and it is entertaining and I would like people that come to see this to go out and speak about it so we get this across the nation and the only way that we will become a a stronger more unified country that looks towards light and truth faith and family and country as true values is
if we start to take over the culture because culture defines reminds us. So, she has given you an insider look in what real culture is. And I'm and I'm going to underline that because I believe in objective truths, objective sacred values, and that movie shows you exactly what they are. And so, I'm hoping that people will take that hour and 39 minutes and go, "Wow." And they'll talk about it with their friends. And we get this across the whole nation. That's what I would like to see. I would like to see this as a renaissance towards rebuilding our country with the potential that it really has. Now on Saturday, it'll be you giving a talk and presenting uh I know you have some imagery that you'll present from your experience and talk about the ideas of heroism and things like this. And in the Saturday event, so Friday the spouses, men and women are are coming to that. Friday or Saturday is uh a men's event.
Yeah. Now, with that in mind, what type of a message are you hoping that these guys take away who come talk to you, listen to this talk of yours? What type of values, virtues, uh, and maybe actions are you hoping that people walk away Saturday night with in their minds and their hearts? Um, I I mean, it's kind of obvious I'm a guy. There's no confusion there. And so what I hold is what are we supposed to do as guys? We're providers. We're creators. We're builders. And I I'm giving an example of what we can be as dads. My daughter's in that movie. Uh what we can be as leaders, as bosses that run organizations. And the whole issue is like we need to make templates for others. And I'm not perfect by any
stretch of the imagination, but I do know something about what it takes to bust down walls and get that vision implemented. And I think all too often in our society, it's like we have a nar you can't do that because well, that's a bunch of BS. It's like the only thing that's stopping you is your internal mechanizations of like your perception of reality. So if if if we come to this event and we enter it as a community and with the realization that we hold more in common than indifference and the concept of this toxic masculinity is another way to just tear down our society. It's complete BS. Toxic masculinity was formed by people that wish to protest and destroy and rip the fabric of families apart. This movie is not only about the making of a monument. It is also about a man who has
a wife and two daughters. Both of them which pose the other the other daughters a doctor in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was the nurse that holds up the gas man by the shell shock soldier. And I my my job has not only been to make monuments, but also to raise two two kids. And now she has an amazing family with a son. So it's generational. My DNA came from DNA. And it's important that my DNA go into the future. That's what I was put on the planet as well, not only to make art, but to procreate and do it well and hold yourself in judgment and not be like letting yourself off the hook, but be your best version. And that's what this movie speaks of. So, that's what I hope to bring to that that evening. Now, you know, with Meriwether, we also do a lot of programs for dads and their sons. We do backpacking trips and things like this where we go out and we we talk about the cardinal virtues and we have a whole a whole thing that we do and ultimately our goal is to to build a
boy school. What what would you tell a teenage boy and maybe if you're a dad watching this podcast, hit the pause button, go grab your son. Uh Sabin is about to give him a message. What would you tell to a teenage boy who is kind of coming up uh into his worldview and he's living in the culture that we live in now? What what would you want him to to really take to heart as he grows into his manhood? Well, I I think we're not only cerebral beings, we're also very physical beings. And the aspect of making things, of building things, of thinking outside the box are good. Sitting in a classroom is not always the best thing for a boy. You need to be able to get your yayas out. And going out into nature and seeing that there's something bigger than yourself and seeing how incredible it is. I mean, I I used to be a rock climber and slept outside at least four nights of the week. And so it's a I I know what it means to go on an
exploration to go in search of something like let's let's make it dramatic where no man has gone before is very important and and kids are like they they haven't learned all the the walls that you are supposed to fit into as a in society as you get older doing the right thing. Well, doing the right thing is much bigger than what is taught to us in school. And our dads can teach us a lot more than we actually know because they've been around the block a bit and they've they've actually were kids, too. And I think the bonding of of of sons to fathers is very important because not only is it a moment in time, but that dad will not be there someday. And that son might remember some of the things his dad told him on like, "Okay, son. I know it looks
like crap today, but look, this is what could happen." And so the learning of like what's possible is very important that's passed on generationally for the next generation. It's a stewardship that is very important that the right things are taught. Again, we're going back to objective truths that that is what this is about. And if listeners wanted to learn more about your work, how would they find you online? Well, just sabinhoward.com, but if you just punch in my name, Sabin Howard, you'll find plenty of stuff. Ton of podcasts. Uh, one of the most um the funniest ones is maybe the Mike Row R podcast. That's a good one. And I just did a Victor Davis Hansen one about three weeks ago. It's a little bit more brainy. Um, there you just there are tons of podcasts you'll find. Um, just knock yourself out.
Fantastic. And guys, um, if you want to join us in Nashville, December 11th and 12th is the weekend of our events. You can learn more at maryweatheracademy.com/events. And Sabin, thank you so much for your time today and I'll see you here in Nashville shortly. Yes, you will. Looking forward to it. Thank you very much, Warren.
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