Worthy of our great republic. We do so by advocating for the classic condition in civic design. We believe that tradition is unparalleled and its dignity, beauty and harmony, not to mention its legibility to the common man. It is no accident that the Founding Fathers chose the classical style when designing the Nations Capital and its and its core buildings of government. The founders sought to harken back to republic rome and democratic athens and knew that classical architecture was time honored and timeless. The National Civic arts Society Works to continue and expand upon the founders vision for the Nations Capital in federal design generally. I perhaps dont need to tell you that since the 19 fifties, washington d. C. Has been marred and disfigured by federal buildings and memorials that do not comport with the citys classical heritage and identity. For instance, there is the hirsch horn museum, which looks like a bunker. Then theres the bird list fbi building which i called the ministry of fear. At the same time, some of our National Memorials are not only not classical, they do not reflect the consensus view of the subject commemorated. For example, the Martin Luther king junior memorial is wholly secular, a socialist realist work that fails to include the reverends most famous lines such as, i have a dream. More recently, the eisenhower memorial under construction, a memorial to a traditional and modest president , is a gargantuan de constructionist assemblage of towering cylindrical pillars and an unintelligible woven steel screen that is bigger than the Hollywood Sign in los angeles. Ever since the construction of the Vietnam Veterans memorial, a memorial to an admittedly divisive war, the general trend in america is that memorials must not show signs of valor or heroism. As an egregious case in point, the united flight 93 memorial in shanksville, pennsylvania, fails to commemorate the heroism of the passengers on that flight. This is the case despite the fact that those passengers likely saved the plane from crashing into a core building of government. Instead of being commemorated as heroes, the passengers are remembered as nothing but victims. As you will see tonight, the new world war one memorial breaks that trend. While it rightfully acknowledges the magnitude of the suffering and loss in the war, at the same time it depicts the soldiers bravery in the crucible of battle. It is not yet another victim memorial. And at the same time, it tells the story of a country on the rise, confident and powerful. But it is more than that, the memorial is monumental and beautiful and sends a clear, patriotic and compelling message with easily comprehensible symbolism and allegory. We hope it will set a new trend in american commemorative works. You might ask how did such a design come to be selected . The answer lies in great part to the fact that the World War One Centennial Commission chose to hold an open blindly review Design Competition that, unlike some other competitions, was not biased against classical design in favor of modernism and postmodernism. The competition jury was also carefully selected and the leadership of the commission played a crucial role. They are to beat heartily commended. And speaking of such leadership, i now turn things over to edwin fountain, vice chairman of the world war i centennial commission. Thank you. [applause] thank you gesture and thank you for the stimulating conversations we had along the way before and during the competition and selection process. You are not here to listen to me. Sabin is much more interesting. What he has to show you is much more interesting that i can. But i want to talk about the process that led to his selection as the sculptor for the world war one memorial. This is the rendering of the overall memorial site. If you do not know where it is, this is across the street from the Willard Hotel at the far end of pennsylvania avenue, just one block from the white house. It was an existing memorial to the commander of the American Expeditionary forces in world war i. This was the site that congress authorized us to redevelop as the National World war one memorial. And it in undertaking that project, we began with three constraints. The first was, as you see, this has to be not just a memorial, but immemorial within a while functioning urban park. Unlike the venom vietnam veteran memorial and the korean memorial, which is a standalone memorial in a blank space of grass, here we had to also serve a city park function, which helps channel the ultimate selections we made. That site itself is within a very complex urban environment. The neighbors to this site are the Willard Hotel, the washington hotel, the sherman memorial across 15th street, the department of commerce, the Wilson District building, Freedom Plaza and the jw marriott. Very distinct and different urban structures, urban spaces. This site had to harmonize and be complimentary to those sites. A third constraint the developed along the way was that we were instructed to preserve the existing part. That in itself is an interesting object lesson in modernist is nine of urban landscapes. We resisted, but had to ultimately yield to the inevitable, and so we had to work within the contours of that existing park. That further drove channels our selection. So that meant that a memorial based on an architectural form was pretty much a nonstarter. That would just never work in a site like this. It meant that, in the end, there were a lot of interesting designs that we looked at that ultimately were discarded. About two of the five finalists i said i would love to see this park built, but just not here on pennsylvania avenue. Within those constraints, we had two key and related choices at the in sampson of the Memorial Development process. The first that justin alluded to was, do we go by open competition or do we have some sort of prescreened competition, either where we have a request for portfolios and then select designers with the design to come later . Or do we choose a number of established firms with a track record in these kinds of projects and then invite them to submit their Design Concepts and proceed from there . That is largely what happened in the eisenhower memorial project. We are closely studied that. We largely agreed with a critique that justin and the National Civic arts society made about that process. And frankly, we thought the Vietnam Veterans memorial competition was a success story. And so we went on that route for a variety of reasons. The second choice was whether to put our thumb on the scale, whether to prescribe certain parameters in terms of the forum or the style of the memorial at the outset of this open blind competition. Did we want to prescribe that it would be in one particular motif for another . Did we want to prescribe that it would have these elements or whatnot . In the end, we opted to leave all of that relatively on stated. We wanted a variety, a breath of memorial concepts because we did not know what might be out there. So we did not come into this prejudging that it would be a classical or a figurative design. My own personal inclination was in that direction, but we were humble enough to know that we didnt know what we might want and we wanted to throw the field open to see what might come to the door. Ultimately, we received 360 submissions from around the world. I learned in this process that chinese architects entered these Design Competitions in droves. I was very nervous that we might have one or two chinese submissions. I suspect that they were along the more, whats the word, Creative Solutions that defied certain laws of gravity in physics. In the end, we wound up with five u. S. Based firms, which i was pleased by, but that was not a prerequisite. There was one submission that i remember that i had an absolutely beautiful rendering of a sculpture in the round. Just exquisitely done. We paid a lot of attention to, but ultimately we discarded in part because it rested within an architectural form that, again, was not just appropriate for the site. But the sculpture itself, it was wrong and theme, but the scale and artistry of the sculptor was undoubted. I learned later that that sculptor was sabin howard. But we rejected his submission. So we had five finalists. I will skip over that process, although i do want to call out joe. Joe was the architect who won the Design Competition. What joe did was come up with the park solution. He contemplated about 300 linear feet of sculptures. He photoshopped reference samples to show what it might be, but he did not attempt to depict a particular narrative or set of images or whatnot. It was just sort of a insert sculpture here approach to the design. The jury saw the merit to that and it appeal to the commission as well. One of the selling points was that opportunity that it afforded for large figurative sculpture. Why was that important to us . To me at least, and i think to the commission, it was for a number of reasons. The first was that commemorating an event that happened 100 years ago, we wanted the memorial to be of the time that it commemorated. Although all the veterans of that war had long past, will not long, but had passed by the time we embark on this memorial, we wanted it to be recognizable to the participants in the conflict that it was commemorating. The second is, more than the other National War Memorial that we have on the wall, a world war i moral needs and a very strong educational element. I happen to like the Vietnam Veterans memorial a great deal, as do many others, but it and the world war ii memorial in a very different way, they were both abstract memorials. Viewers today do not need to be told what those words were about or what the wars mean, although i carry 50 years from now what someone will make of this massive black wall with 55,000 names inscribed on it and wonder why that memorial form was chosen. But world war i, given the lack of a place that war has an american memory in american cultural consciousness, there needed unaired a narrative element to convey the magnitude of the American Service and sacrifice and that war, which was the third bloodiest war in our history. The american deaths in that war exceeding those in vietnam in korea combined. There needed to be in educational and narrative component to this memorial that conveyed that, then inspired further self education on those points. It needed a visual element. Weve seen dozens of movies about the civil war and about pickets charge at gettysburg. Weve seen dozens of movies and Television Miniseries and tv shows about world war ii, be it band of brothers or the longest day or saving private ryan. We saw mash, the vietnam war came to us through our tv sets. We dont have in our collective memory that visual representation of world war i. We needed to show that that war was every bit as savage and buddy and our soldiers every bit as heroic and courageous as those and other wars that we commemorate. Only figurative sculpture would do that we thought. And so the educational and visual components combine in this cinematic narrative that sabin well show you in a moment. It shows in in an impressionistic way what the war looked like, and also tells the story of the American Experience in the war and that is why his design appeal to us. In the second stage of the competition, we said to joey might help if you went out and found a sculpture. So joe went to the sculptural yellow pages and found sabin howard. Joe obviously saw what we saw, which is just based on his portfolio, sabin is one of the finest figurative sculptures sculptures working today. I did not come to give you his bio. He was raised in italy, which gave him an unfair head start in terms of training with classical sculptures. He has studied and taught in philadelphia and elsewhere around the country. He has been a practitioner of this form for 30 years. As you will see in his work, its absolutely exquisite. What we were looking at was these very geico roman looking nude torso that he did. Here we were asking him to expand from single forms to what ultimately became a 38 figure work. Rather than static forms and in very classical poses, going to this very kinetic and violent and turbulent interlocking groups of figures that were far beyond what he had done to that point. Had i known what a gamble we were taking at the time, im not sure we wouldve had the nerve to do it, but he has repaid that gamble in spades. And so without further ado, i will start there, i will turn it over to sabin howard. [applause] all right. Thank you for coming tonight. So, let me give you a taste of where i started and where my mind was before the project and where it progressed through the project, because i was unprepared for this project when it began. As the title is so aptly named, a soldiers journey, its a heroes journey, and i really had to grow with the project to be able to pull off something of such magnitude that would appeal to not only washington, but also the world, because the world comes to washington to learn about the history of this country. As ed win so aptly stated, i began as a class assist and worked out of the studio in the south bronx until joe sent me a very polite email on september 14th asking me to partner up with him, and i did. So i was doing figures that were very static and esoteric. Im just going to run through these so you get an idea of what i was doing. I was casting in bronze, and bronze beats mortality. Its a way to create something that outlasts everybody in the room. I learned my craft and my art in italy. Im half italian, my mother is italian and my fathers american. My education came from a man who came out of the ballhaus cool in germany and that element about structure of the figure and how figure is developed as an architectural system using organic forms, is how i perceive reality. So my education had a large part in how i see reality. So im showing you these because this is how i think. The way that i saw single figure was the way that i eventually was able to compose a competition with 38 figures. I might add that that competition that we finally came up with was not the first one. It was around the 18th one. And there were quite a lot of meetings that i drove back to new york to rebuild and start from scratch. These are anatomical drawings that you can see i am thinking well below the surface of the human body. There are a couple of things that really informed my work. First, and foremost, like at wind said, what are we depicting . Human beings. Were depicting the human experience. We are showing what it means to be human. Thats a pretty deep statement, because you do not see a lot of that these days. Theres not a lot of figurative art out there. Everything is abstract. And the other element, everything is enhanced. Reality is enhanced by digital technology. So this is the journey that i wanted to talk to me about, tonight. These are some of the drawings, but i was doing before. Where i used actually people. This is a man, mark, from floods nick, in new york. This is the structural element that i applied to my thought process. This is a way of observing reality, and transferring it into the art realm. So heres the project that we finally have in front of us. We didnt start here, its been a long dear journey, actually. And i realize today, was the first time i realized i drove to washington and i did not have to go through a bureaucratic meeting. I was really relieved. It was good to be in the car for the first time. Im very honest. So i got this project, and i thought, okay where do i go . Why do i look for . I used the same way of creating art, my methodology, that i had for the previous 30 years. I went to the computer, and i looked for pictures of real people. What did they look like, whats the emotion that was there . So i started finding imagery that actually made me realize how human this war was. The girl with a hug reminds me of my daughter. The soldiers above remind me of my friends. And i began to realize that there is a Common Thread here, do what ive been doing. So when you get into a project like this, there are a lot of voices. It winds gusted perhaps that i look for a figure that reminded him of a famous marine. I found this picture, and i sent it to him. So a dialog begins. So you are not working in a studio, by yourself. You are engrossed in this conversation with thousands of people, and again all be rather confusing. Especially when this is a very foreign subject to you. World war i was not really taught to me, besides in a european history class. It did not have the sort of death that i might have for American History or other elements of history. So i am looking at these images, and im beginning to realize that there is something really painful going on here. So this was my first attempt. This was the architectural element with sculptures underneath. That began in 2015. Then, entering with joe, i did these drawings. There are a couple of things that i chose to look for. A low high level, giving a monumental feel, a very dynamic quality to the figures. But this was not really the direction that we were going to take. This was in 2016, in january, i looked a lot younger back then. You did to, joe. Its really been quite an epic voyage. And when i talked a bit, in one of the things that really pushed him and inspired him, was this piece by a sculptor who created this in front of the capital building. I dont know if youre aware, this but this took 20 years to create. The two sculptures. And then he died two weeks before the unveiling. So thats a testament to the amount of energy that is necessary to create something of such importance and grandeur. But i looked at this, and this is not what i was doing. I was doing something that was static, and not really available to the general public. So i needed to change my methodology of creating arent, so that the person, or the visitor to the memorial, seen my work would be sucked in and have a visceral reaction. That is the task that was laid in front of me. Lets make something that will have a direct impact on people, and they will go home and they will want to learn more and get involved in this. In an emotional fashion. So why am i showing the last judgment . Because through this, i guess the first three or four months of the project, i am hearing, all you need to put some horses, you need to put some tanks on, you need to put barbed wire in, the list is really long. Beyond that doesnt. It creates a lot of confusion in an artist. Especially on a topic that you are now working on in all of a sudden youre thrown into it. So i went into my studio, and i hear this voice in my head, and i dont always hear voices in my head with this day i did, and it was do what you know. And thats why now. I know italian reluctance art renaissance, art and i know the last judgment, and i know the figure. By looking at, that i saw was frightful of humanity. All of these fingers intertwined, and they are not individualistic, they are not alone, they are not alienated, they are all connected. So it began to dawn on, me if i made a relief, that had figures that were moving forward and backward, advancing and receding in space, it would create something way more dynamic. So i began designing, in my first attempts were rather, im searching for the word, bad . For . I want to show you, this was the first attempt. I want to show you the process, its gonna take a second to load, i have the versions here. I did 18 versions. I took over 12,000 pictures. I guess it was nine months. When i began to do as i began to work using a cell phone and where i would used a burst, you know you press the button and it will capture a movement . I began to do that. So the actors were no longer posing on the stand, they were in movement, acting something out. And then i would do the burst, and i would get 12 frames through that movement, and all of a sudden we were telling a story. So a story has always been a really big part of my story, my wife is a novelist. And the influence began to really creep in more and more. I began to realize, thats the missing element to work. You need to have a story behind the structural aspect. And you need to create a story that is universal, and its also my personal story, as an artist, because i need to be able to get behind us. So here we go. This is the first one that i brought, i think it was april, of 2016. This is so incredibly static. Its a giant mess. I will enlarge it a little bit, so you can see and all squall across. This is like the line at the supermarket. Neverending. There is no meaning here. So heres the family. Now theyre going off to war. And look at the posing, its a little bit stingy, right . So i want to show you my honesty and my process, and how much i had to grow, to get to the place on the other side. This is the battle scene. Okay, come on guys, that battle scene, i know. So again, one figuring here that has a little bit more action. And then here is the cost of war. And here is a return home. And then the final scene is my daughter. The only thing that remained from this initial scene, is the image of my daughter at the end. Now im going to ways through as we progress, so this is ill go slow and then, here we start to get a little bit better on the left, this idea remained. This idea remained. And then this whole section was cut out. Some of the poses remain. But then look what happens here, there is oppose with this model. This is james, i heard a story from james. James was a brit, his family was personally involved in world war i. His great great grandfather died, his great uncle served and came back, but with his Service Revolver shot his wife, shot him self, and shot his daughter. Thats when i started to realize this is the gravitas you need to show other people. So without going through too much of this i started posing. You can see how were getting closer. So if i enlarge this, here we go. Now were starting to get someplace. This was the beginning of where we were going. You could see the Kinetic Energy. But there is still some confusion with figures facing each other. But then okay, here is a cost of war. It went had an idea, why dont you have a figure coming directly out . Theres a lot of suffering here. And again, the ending at the same. I will continue livid faster, because this lecture has a lot of elements. Until we arrived, i reversed the figure in the middle. So he is now leading the charge. And you can see how this becomes more cohesive, and the reason i show you the anatomical stuff is because you have a hierarchy when you construct a figure of many elements. The skeleton is the architecture, and the muscles are the energy, the spirals around the forces, forcing the architecture to move. In some ways, i am an architect working with organic form. So when you make a single figure, it has many units, and all those units have their specific importance. And that has to create one unit, which is one finger figure. So here you have one composition with many elements, how do you do that . And thats how i learned it how to do it. At the end of this nine month process, with ed went into his commission, no thats not me, we got to drawing. And i remember sitting with ed win, at the barns and noble, down on 14th street, in new york city, and headwind said ok go ahead and do the drying. And i was so relieved, that we had gotten here to this place. But i also want to say that i think as an artist, its critical to go through this process of commissions. Because it takes you outside of yourself, in forces you to grow in ways that you wouldnt because they are so uncomfortable. There is a lot of looking in the mirror and saying okay what do i improve here . And there is a dozen people at that table and you need to hold on to your idea of what division is, and also at the same time, work with them. And thats something that i dont think happens very often, because sometimes, artists will give in and say yes, yes, yes to everybody, and then the whole vision falls apart. Im very stubborn and i have a very clear vision at times. So this was something that really was a balance between democratic concept of a lot of concepts and ideas from a group, and then trying to hold on to their vision. And thats a very tricky subject to deal with. So here is the final image. Lets go now to, all right. So, im going to run through the next lights to show you with this first idea was. The camera, when it does. Did you see that . Thats what were doing. So we are capturing the single image and this is how Technology Comes into play in the image capturing. Its about movement. Nothing is static, and when i was doing before, everything is stacked. Everything is vertical. Now, all of a sudden, theres a diagonal to the figures. And the diagonal, the more it increases the more the Kinetic Energy increases. And the higher the feeling of energy is. So, in our relief, we have a whole plethora feelings and emotions that describe the war. They describe humanity, andy describe who we are as human beings. So here is a story that my wife informed me one day, at breakfast table, called a heros journey. And it is a soldiers journey. Its a call to adventure. The next section is entering into crossing a threshold to enter a challenge, temptation, heres a war, a base, and death its the very central of the composition. Followed by transformation. I dont, mint and then return. Then that return comes full circle. So i did not know i was doing this, but i began to realize after my wife talked to me, its case me quite a bit. Heroes journey is, and every single culture of the world, every single time frame of the world, and there is not a single part of society that had not used this template for telling the tale of the hero. This is a diagram of a soldiers journey. You can see there is a very clear beginning, a middle and in and. If you can look in the middle of that, you can see the x. The x is a symbol for transformation and change. That was something, again, but i had not plant. Obviously, world war i transform the planet and the world and society on so many levels. For one, it was the end of figurative art and the beginning of modernism. Its ironic that this project, which follows the war 100 years later, is figurative. The figures also took on more meaning than just being a soldier and a family going to war. Its an allegory. So you have three different stories. You have a family story, and allegory of the United States, and you have a mythological story as well. After the drawing was done, we need to make a sculpture. I traveled 9000 miles away to create that sculpture over six months. In so doing, i had to start again with a different system to create the first markup, which was 12 inch high. We we shot all the figures in around, we numbered each of the figures and began something which i never dwelled him before. Its the Digital World of the figure. I had done everything traditionally. I had a model, i had lighting, i had tools that were made used by sculptures 2000 years ago and clay. I did not know how to do this programming on a computer with a brush. So i ended up with a digital moviemaking company because they had a full Boutique Organization where you could hire sculptors, mold the piece after it was cast and then ship it. We had to discuss with them how do we deal with placing theories together on a screen and not losing the proportions of the drawing . The eye level is around the knee, so everything above is reduced especially from below. So the figures look much larger than they actually are. We did milling and tests in the first month to figure out the depth of the relief. These milling tests explained to us break quickly that if we wanted something that was highly emotional, we had to go deeper for greater impact. And then also, if this is to be seen from 175 feet away, you need to do something that has really dark darts and light lights so it really pops off the background. So im working in the template of the roman sarcophagus and some of those are eight or nine feet long. They might have 25 figures. That is what i was working with. From there, this was our final print. From here, we digitalized and that and cut all these figures up into 120 sections. Those 120 sections and plastic were shipped to china, printed in china and then shipped back to new zealand where they were molded. This is the pink stuff. Its not frosting on a cake. And then transferred to a clay. The clay was then assembled. These are digital. So they have a very manic unlike flavor to them. Im going to go faster through this because i want to show you more of the actual monument. I just want to give you an idea of how labor intensive it is to create Something Like this. Thats the scale. Those are all the hands and guns. This all has to reoccur at full scale. Do you see how slick this looks . Theres no sense of human fingerprint. Thats the digital fingerprint. That is whats most art that is figurative today. Its done using a mechanical device, the computer, tamil out the figures and something is lost. So i took this and i sculpted for 71 days straight and transferred it back into a feeling that an artist or a human hand had done it. Thats me after 71 days. Yes. It is that thing you said . The thousand yard stare . In a way, i had ptsd. I experienced ptsd, but not to the same level as men on the battlefield. But the intensity of this will play with your head and scramble your brain. These are my final pictures. So then this is cut into sections, the assembled and then you go through the same process of molding. You now cast in resin and then you reassemble this. We spraypainted that and sent this back to the United States for a meeting. Was it 2018 . In february. February. That didnt go so well. We then did a bunch of other meetings with the commission of fine arts that lasted until the following year. And then, i was asked to reduce the relief, and in reducing the relief from 75 feet to our eventual 60 feet, the composition got tighter, more dramatic and more energetic. And again, i looked towards technology. How do we do this quickly . I had four months to redo the whole composition and start the process of thinking ahead to the monument. I went to this place in the uk called pangolin. They work with damien hearst. They are basically the most cutting edge foundry in europe. This is a photo graham a tree machine which sets up 160 cameras around the model. You put the models on the inside, you pose them, and now from here you get a print. Its a three dimensional image. So this is the same moment historically as we had when photography was invented, except now it is three dimensional. So a lot of people that are classically trained are saying this is the death of us all. Im going to argue that it is not. Im going to argue that this enables us to make larger projects, but they have to be driven by traditional values and the ability to use your hands, your heart and your brain to create art. So the education that i received is invaluable for using this technology to create things that are really dynamic and human. Thats a print on the screen. Thats the amount of detail that you can get from the machine. Its fabulous, but its also a temptress. Its deceptive because its all surface. It doesnt have a lot to do with structure. Structure is what gives healing and the sense of humanity to sculpture and art. Im going to rush through these. You can see this is how something is done. Its cut in half and resembled. Thats the top, thats the bottom. We did these are one inch figures. This was a test print. This was eventually the maquette scale that we showed to the fine art committee. Commission. This was the final assembly of last year in march. This was cast in resin. It was quickly patina and with a base and shipped over to washington from the uk. So from here, we eventually passed through the commission of fine arts, and im very grateful for that. I would never want to go through that again. But i learned a lot from it and i think this is a really interesting project as edwin was talking about. I want to jump into the last segment of this and show you the actual memorial being built. There is a sense of sacredness to the project where the figures are slightly over scale. They are six foot six. Some of them are slightly larger because they are not standing upright, they are crouching, so they would be around seven foot two. But they are bursting at the seams of the frame. So they are larger than life. So when you walk along from left to right and you look at these groups and scenes, you realize that theres something very heroic and monumental to this achievement of these men going into battle and then returning. It speaks well of humanity. It speaks also of heroism, that we are able to rise to the occasion, faced with great odds. That fit very, very well with the way that i was working before, with my creation of figures like apollo or mars or some of the female figures like after daddy. This is the actual memorial no doubt in the foundry. It looks great in a photo from a distance, but when you see closer images its still manic unlike. This is the first print and this gets shipped and arrives in new jersey at my studio in angle would where it is unloaded and resembled. The studio also was created to make use of Natural Light so that it would not be sculpted under incandescence light. So it would have the impact outside because it was created in the same sort of environment. This is the studio and progress. You can see here our models. We are working from models. Most people are working today from photographs and from computer screens. It gets really dangerous when you do that because those are flat images. Those are references that have no references that do not create, they do not have any sense of expansion. So when i look at a model, i am using my anatomical knowledge to take that, translate that into an art form, and one of the big things im looking for is how do i sub the via the figure into the surfaces. Each one of those little sections, you know when you go to the butcher and you see the picture of the cow and its all mapped out . You have a rump stake, all of these sections, thats called mapping out. I map out the figure using my anatomical knowledge as the grammar for discerning when i am seeing. When i do that, each one of those sections is pressing out into space. Theres convex it he. That is a symbol for who we are as human beings. We are bursting with life. We have energy pushing out. When we die, the energy, or the pressure, is gone. On the one hand, im going to make an analogy of a grape turning into a raisin. It shrinks onto its up. It collapses. So the sculpture, for my concept, is about this massive amount of energy pushing out, not only at the fewer, but progressing towards the future from left to right. So we sculpt from life 40 hours a week. The other sculptors are learning and we are on target in terms of time by next august. Next august we will be sending the first section to be cast at the foundry. I wanted to show you some of the last 12 weeks of sculpting. For example, in the initial scene where the father is being held back by the mother who is an allegory for the United States, or america. Heres the father, i put his seek lamp on his coat and recreated the same sort of attention of his coat being pulled off his body as he pulled forward to join his comrades at arms. These are the attention to details that will be the narrative for the visitor to understand and tell the story through artistic merit. Not a book, but visual format. Thats rare, these days. The book has become more important than the visual format. So this was the father figure, i worked on that for four weeks. Taking elements such as the coat and pushing the sense of stretch that these men had to go through. Increasing the tension in the jaw. And i worked with anatomy, so i can understand whats going on. This is one of the models. The models are transformed into these characters. This is another model, this is a mother figure in the initial scene. This is a diagramming that i talk to you about, the idea of convex itty. So there might be can cavities in the body, but you do not think that, because if you do hear pressing things in. Thats what we get, thats the digital part. Its a mannequin. It has no energy. But its a fantastic armature to put the clay, on and begin the artistic process at scale. We went to a tailor, and recreated the same sort of costumes that were used in that day and age. And then we applied clay with our hands. And we diagram, and we created rhythms, and movements that are a translation from reality. What youre seeing right there, is to tell the story. Its done, not for a chanel comer suit commercial beauty shape, but its to tell a story, the impact in eighth grader when they walk by, so they will get very interested in something that happened 100 years ago. This is the foam and clay from an afternoon of chopping. Its cut off and reformed. Just to show you a little bit about the rhythms and diagrams, you can see how, for example, the delta weighed, triceps, next answers, these curves are very much the way art was once taught. And now has been eliminated from arts cools. Because for the most, part figurative art is really gated to a three hour block in an art students career. See the dynamic action . Nothing is still. So our models are suffering right now. Theyre not just standing around, they are actually in motion. Theres a lot of grumbling going on, but its working. It gives you an idea of the alteration. The way that the cast bulges, the way the achilles heel is tense. The gluts and their tightness. And the clods, and the sense of the rib cage. And how the arm flows out from the back. Thats what we were looking at. This is me teaching one of my assistants. So this is what we started from. And this is what the template is to play forward. This is native American Indian from turkey tribe, my wife went out to find a native american who would come model for us. And then one of the people that i really admired and respect, and hope to play forward the message that he left us, michelangelo. But there is a sense of great dignity, even to the foot. And the back. And you can see the fullness, in the energy that is there. And that is what washington needs, from my viewpoint. A sense of dignity because art is representation of your culture. And i dont want to be represented by cinder blocks. So i wanted to show you something that happened in the final stage, last week. Let me engage you in the three figures understanding. So as we move into the fuller scales we have much more to work with. In the story gets a lot deeper. So here is the wife whos also an allegory for america. We were reluctant to enter into this war. And here is the husband, who also represents america and the hero. So he pulls away from her, and he is caught in the middle between the brotherhood of arms and his family. And i want you to look, this has just started, but if i show you the faces they begin to tell a story. The wife is the beginning of beauty, were not there yet. There is a fears charge in the soldier. And this brotherhood of arms figure carries the anger and hatred of war, and the aggression that is necessary to survive and win. These soldiers here, are different types, theyre not all generic. This man was elected specifically for his ethnic background. Hes an African American here is well wearing a french helmet. And we did not wear parties when we went into war, we wore gaiters. And this attention to detail is beginning to come out in scale. The cartridge belts as well, they have to be developed their full, theyre not empty. And here is a dress that was designed for the project, and the short as well. This is last week. We got our next shipment. This is that the foundry. And the battle scene was the next shipment. This is the math cat that we used to put this together. So you understand how deep this is on so many levels . My wife asks me as my project manager, for all the logistics that are involved in these projects, its huge. Both of us work nonstop, during the week. I am doing the artistic elements, shes doing the business bright. The amount of detail to get this done is incredible. The figure in the middle is full photographs tree. This figure is now in the round, it was not there before. So that is a photograph, and we used the same model that we had used in the initial drawings. Except now its three dimensional. That will now get chopped when i work from the next year. It gives you a sense of scale. It will be slightly higher when its cast and shown. So thats the battle scene that arrived with the green clay on top. You have about two to four milliliters of, clay and this is pure milling with no clay. This is the studio. With the battle scene. And that is the central figure representing dan dailey. This is a native americans, i showed you photographs of before, from the cherokee nation. And this is my special tool, a dollar 25 k mark brush that i bought. Its the trick. So its not the tools its whats in your head, and heart, and education. And how what you know, your education, creates a reality through your perception. So we put the composition together in this is the first 18 figures. And its really interesting, because i have not seen anything like this lately. And im really excited to share this with you tonight, because i am hoping this is the beginning of something new in the art world. So justin, i want to thank you for having me and ed wind, thank you for picking, the sort of. Im still working that out. And thank you joe for asking me to be your partner. And also my wife, who standing by me. [applause] i think if you have too many things going on, it gets confusing for the viewer. So i needed to come up with something that really, you cant handle everything, from so many different elements. Yes you couldve put the enemy, but then all of this race all of the story becomes complicated. It was pretty quick in the beginning. Its a question. I wanted to make something that was easily understood by all. And then you have many layers, to. I felt if i put the enemy, and you would get confusion. And the other question, thank you very much, maybe a silly question, but where does all the money come from . The memorials in washington, Congress Passed and authorizing legislation that says no federal funds shall be spent on this memorial, by the end of the project, federal founds have found their way in the memorial. So its roughly speaking, id say two thirds private, one third public. At this point, private funds have been raised principally from High Net Worth individuals and foundations that have a particular interest in the messaging in the history being commemorated here. Yes, right here . Thank you. This may be also a question for ed win, so i apologize, i absolutely the location is perfect, right by the, white house right by the, treasury the commerce department, can you talk about maybe any restoration of the park, of pushing park . Because right now i wouldnt want this magnificent sculpture to be somewhere that may not smell the best, or how something this grand be diminished by not a good bark . So thats how federal funding is finding its way in. As i say, we are required ultimately under the preservation act to preserve the existing park. Which was deemed a significant historic park. So much of the design work, through the process were gonna have to tear up the park and put it back the weight was, so we persuaded the park service that a lot of the project is rehabilitating what had gone to become dilapidated over the last 35, 40 years. And we really should not have to pay for that. The park service, with some help from some people on capitol hill that we know, agreed. So they are kicking in money, adding to deferred maintenance. So when we are we doing the plantings because trees were planted with inadequate soil volumes and whatnot, thats going to be paid for by the park service. When we are replacing a broken stone works, replacing mechanical and electrical plumbing systems, thats being paid for by the park service. The second half of it is maintenance. Under the commemorative works, act which governs memorials in washington d. C. , the memorial sponsor has to provide a 10 endowment. 10 of the construction cost, on top, has to be paid over to the park service and that goes to pay for the big picture maintenance. A pump, breaks someone breaks of a piece of the rifle, or Something Like that, there is a Lightning Strike that does something, who knows what. As to the daily maintenance, which has also suffered over the last 30, years my job is with this commission which built precinct park in the first place. We built the world war ii memorial. We built the korean war memorial. And we maintain all of the american cemeteries and memorials overseas. And to be frank, we are the Gold Standard when it comes to maintenance on the sites, if you ever been to whatever cemeteries enormity. They have undertaken to provide for the maintenance of the side built. Because congress likes us a whole lot more than they like the park service, and its easier for us to get funds for maintenance of a war memorial, than it is to get for your park service to get maintenance for an urban park in washington, d. C. So that is where federal money is coming into the project. And thats how it will be used, to make sure that the site lives up to the sculpture. But the site honors the memorial that we are putting into it. As you will know, there are a handful a very competent world war i sculptors new york. Your work is so much more ambitious than any other projects. Do you use those in your memory bank as inspiration, as touchdowns for your work . Thank you for that question. Its a really important element and my tradition, and i follow in the put steps. I didnt make a trip specifically to london from the foundry to look at the jagger sculpture at paddington station. One of the things that really impressed me about it was the proportions of the figure and how block like they were. They were reminiscent of the cube system that michelangelo used for a ribcage to give it a break heavy set structural vitality that would last through many ages. It is power, but it is also a sense of a static energy that is breathing and a living. The other element that was very element that was very important in that piece that i was very intrigued by was the texture and how the texture was not smooth smooth over like what we are seeing a lot today. It was applied and had a lot more emotion and drama to it. I felt that was very fitting to a memorial. Thats one of the things that im looking for. The actual application of the clay enhanced is the story so it has more movement and vitality. It gives it in ethereal quality. Jagger is the one artist that ive really looked at carefully. Just a caveat for edwin, ive just restored the very first figurative fountain in america, the allegory in philadelphia, which has been in storage for 70 years. Admittedly on view at the philadelphia museum, but its in effectively in storage. To my mind, the most vulnerable part of monuments like this are inevitably the water features. Unlike roman fountains, which are gravity fed, the mechanisms in this country we have a great deal problem with these water features. This is amplified water feature that should have a better future. On the other hand, the water feature inside the National Portrait gallery Smithsonian Art Museum has been decommissioned. Theyve given up trying to get that to work satisfactorily. Having seen the construction drawings, the Water Systems arent quite as simple as we would like. One parameter we did originally put in the competition brief was in a water, because we knew of those problems and we knew that the park service hates taking care of water. By the time we got through the commission of fine arts, we have the original footprint of the pull at that site. On the back of the sculpture sits on a freestanding wall that is within the pool and there is water cascading over the back as well as in front. And so its complicated. Im well aware of that, and hence the commitment to maintenance. I would be remiss if i did not give one update on the status of the project. Particularly because my fundraiser is sitting in the back there. Its about a 45 Million Dollar project. We raised about 35 and have about ten to go. We will get there, its a question of when. We are very anxious to break ground on the park itself. Once we do that in about 12 months, the park will be brought back up to speed. It will be the platform for the sculpture will be there and we will put up temporary imagery like the scaffolding you see around buildings in europe when they are redoing them and show you what the building looks like. Sabin says hes going to take five years to finish this. His wife tracy tells me hes going to take three and a half. Shes the boss. Bobby. Would be littering the evenings . Yes. We have spent a lot of time on lighting design. That is one of the areas that the commission of fine arts really drilled. The lighting is going to be spectacular. Electric. We did a lighting test and it was fantastic because usually sculptures live and die by like. We got somebody who did the lighting for the sculptures back in new york. We were on the same page. I wanted lighting that was from above and three quarters so that all the figures pop out from the background. The story then becomes more impactful at night. And for my perspective, it will become more dramatic and thats the money shot that will be shown when the memorial is done. Its really strong. One final question. Can you just tell us a bit about the process of getting all the historical details right . I know you had a lot of help from military historians. So, [laughs] as you know, commissioner, sabin has worked closely with the American Battle monuments commission. Our chief historian as well as the commissioner whos on the world war one commission, they all bring expertise in american material culture of that age. So some several months ago, sabin came into our office and we went through the entire storyboard of the peace. We picked out every area where he needed to pay attentive to historic accuracy historical accuracy. Rob and mike will be coming up to his studio periodically. If hes going to be sending off the first section to the foundry in august, then in may or june we will go up there and walk the length of it and say those buttons have to be changed. One thing we never noticed when the maquette was a foot high, but with that we did notice when it was six and a half foot high, was those cartridge belts that you see, they dont go around these days with a full rocket bullets in them. At that point, it became obvious those are deflated and will need to be filled out. We already pointed that out to sabin and he started working on that. There are legions of new pickers out there. We want to silence them. We want to be faithful to the troops as they were. So we are putting a lot of into attention into that. We used also original uniforms that saw combat. In fact, i found pictures in the Salvation Army uniform that i got from might that had pictures from home and it still. That adds a lot of truth to the project, because the clock actually fold the same way that it did originally rather than a fabric that is different. Please join me in thanking sabin for a wonderful presentation. Its a strong term, but i think we might see a masterpiece in the making. Thank you. [applause]