Life in the studio
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Life in the studio

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Since August 26, I’ve been ensconced in an office in my husband’s new studio. Sabin and his team are sculpting the National WWI Memorial.

I have a life in the studio.

I’m the project manager. I’m also Human Resources and CFO of Sabin Howard Sculpture LLC.

There are plenty of non-glamorous, essential tasks in this job for which I roll up my sleeves and apply the grease of my elbows. I’m not just talking about sweeping the floor, emptying trash, and lugging around bronze sculptures, though I’ve done that, too.

I mean things like running payroll, signing checks, tracking hours spent on each figure… Project management is a first cousin to juggling. You know, 1000 balls in the air, and they’d all better stay afloat.

Along the way, I engage in more pleasurable activities–like writing articles. Here’s my latest on Medium, entitled, “The Many Faces of Sabin Howard’s National WWI Memorial.”

Given our interest in WWI, a friend took me to the DGA to see 1917 when it came out. Great movie! Highly recommended!  I wrote a review.

I take photographs almost every day; our daughter put together a video for us. Her YouTube video shows us getting back to work after the holiday break.

And here’s a video that I put together. It’s a little rough but fun–it shows Sabin and his crew taking the memorial relief outside into daylight to see it out doors, the way visitors will see it once it’s installed in Pershing Park, Washington DC.

So I do find ways to exercise my own creativity on this journey alongside my husband.

Medium Article & YouTube Video about Sabin Starting Sculpting
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Medium Article & YouTube Video about Sabin Starting Sculpting

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I posted an article in Medium relating our first few days in Sabin’s new studio, sculpting the National WWI Memorial, A Soldier’s Journey.

It’s been an intense month as we prepared to get to this moment, when Sabin and his team are actually sculpting.

We had a brand new studio–unfinished–to contend with. Indeed, guys were still in the studio grouting tiles when we started work the first day!

The team of sculptors is first rate and the models are terrific.

We had photographers here on Day 1 and Sabin was captured talking about sculpting. It’s a short, sweet YouTube video:

There’ll be more videos and Medium posts as Sabin’s sculpting progresses!

My Article in Quillette Magazine: Art, Commerce, and Vision
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My Article in Quillette Magazine: Art, Commerce, and Vision

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Quillette Magazine published my article on why artists aren’t necessarily leftist: “Art, Commerce, and Vision.”

If you don’t know Quillette, check it out! It’s an online platform for free speech.

Here’s what I wrote my friends:

I am delighted to send you my article on Quillette Magazine. It’s about why artists aren’t necessarily Left-wing. I write about Sabin and his work and broach, yes, the question of what real art is. Hint: “Real art is the product of the personal, human vision of the artist… Beauty, excellence, and the artist’s skill matter.”
If you don’t know Quillette Magazine, I recommend it. Quillette is a platform for free-thinking. It’s one of the very few places taking on current controversies in a thoughtful way. Please consider becoming a Patron of this extraordinary venue.
One note. If you follow my twitter feed, @tracilslatton, you will see that I follow, like, and retweet some Twitter users who are much further to the Right than I am, personally. I do this to preserve their voices. Twitter, along with Facebook and Google, is hell-bent on silencing Conservative voices. I see this as antithetical to free speech, which is the foundation of democracy. We the people need lively, and civil, discussions between people of different viewpoints. We the people need the opportunity to consider all viewpoints of an issue. Technocrat fascism must be resisted.
This article, “Art, Commerce, and Vision” came out of my deep feeling that artists must embrace the business of art.
I hope you enjoy this article. I always enjoy the thought-provoking articles in Quillette.
Quillette Magazine
Art and Representation
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Art and Representation

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Representation

Sabin Howard's Bust of Ceres

My husband Sabin Howard can sculpt. Think Carpeaux, Canova, or Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Think Michelangelo. He says, “Art represents us. How do we want to be represented?”

It’s a fair question, and answering it leads me to all the reasons I’m not a post-modernist. Boiling it down, I believe in transcendence and immanence, meaning and responsibility, the integrity of the individual, and free and unfettered thinking. Ultimately, I believe in beauty, excellence, and the artist’s skill.

So it is with both humility and amusement that I behold Sabin’s Bust of Ceres, for which I posed. It was hours and hours of sitting on a step ladder in our bedroom at night, working to hold my head at the right angle. Sabin is a tough taskmaster. Such demands are placed on the wife of an artist!

She is beautiful. She is me, and she isn’t me. She’s me on Mt. Olympus, an idealized plane of existence. She’s a form of representation that alludes to an aesthetic philosophy that is beyond me, in my day to day life, as I sit at my keyboard, wearing stinky yoga clothes and tapping out the latest novel.

I see the transpersonal in Ceres. She’s soulful, she’s elevated and elevating. I feel fondly toward my husband for naming a portrait of me after a Goddess. My ego is gratified, despite knowing that Sabin chose the Goddess out of his own artistic vision, with little to no concern for the model’s vanity.

On the personal level, I see a woman of a certain age, with more lines on her face than she wishes were there.

 

Recent Sabin Howard Articles, Podcasts & Videos
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Recent Sabin Howard Articles, Podcasts & Videos

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My husband Sabin Howard has been getting a lot of press lately because of the World War I Memorial. Here are some recent Sabin Howard articles, podcasts & videos.

The Wall Street Journal ran a terrific article about him entitled “Conveying Horror and Heroism for World War I Memorial.” If you click here and hit the WSJ paywall, then google “horror and heroism Sabin Howard” and you can get into the full story from the google result. Weird process, but it works.

Sabin Howard articles

The article discusses Sabin’s process in his studio, where he photographs models in WW1 uniforms with his iPhone.

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You can download the PDf of the article here.

Sabin also got some coverage from News12 The Bronx. A young reporter came to his studio and filmed for two hours. Here’s the brief “Best of the Bronx” Clip and the Extended Interview:


Finally, here’s a podcast that’s pretty good, from the Clark Hulings Fund for Visual Artists.