A local sculptor was chosen from among 41 artists from across the United States and Europe who competed to sculpt a statue of Herman Melville, the author of “Moby-Dick,” for the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The artist selection committee chose Oneonta sculptor Stefanie Rocknak for the task. She was one of 12 semi-finalists, then one of four finalists and emerged as the winner of the competition. The process began three years ago in December 2023.
Rocknak’s 7-foot bronze sculpture of Melville was unveiled as a permanent installation of public art Aug. 14 in the whaling port of New Bedford. It sits on a 10,000-pound piece of granite that is 18 inches high, giving Melville a larger-than-life perspective.
This is Rocknak’s most ambitious sculpture project to date, she said. Initially, she created a 19-inch model of a wind-swept Melville rising out of the water with one hand resting reverently on one of three rib bones of a gigantic whale. Once she received feedback from the artist selection committee, she modified her design and created a much larger 5 1/2-foot model in clay.
“It took me six months to create the clay, and then it took the foundry eight months to cast it (in bronze),” Rocknak said. “From start to finish, for me, it was two years, I think.”
Rocknak chose the foundry, Urban Art Projects, in Rock Tavern. “Public art is a team sport, and this sculpture exists because a great many people contributed to it,” she said.
Rocknak, 60, is a self-taught sculptor who has been sculpting for more than 40 years. “I’ve never taken a sculpture class,” she said. She carved her first bust in high school and credits her father, a former high school art teacher, with teaching her about art. She also studied painting, art history and American Studies at Colby College in Maine.
She spent a semester abroad in Rome, a city known for its artists and sculptures. “I love the human figure,” she said. She exhibits paintings and sculptures annually in the Stagecoach Run Art Festival.
In 2012, Rocknak was selected to create a bronze statue of Edgar Allan Poe in Boston.
In addition to her body of work as an artist, Rocknak has been an associate professor of philosophy at Hartwick College for the past 25 years. Her sculpture, which she calls “Melville and Jonah’s Journey” is her own philosophical interpretation of the message from Melville’s 800-page novel, “Moby-Dick.” It is the story of transformation, she said.
Rocknak read “Moby-Dick” in college, she said. She listened to the novel a second time as an audio book for inspiration after she was selected as one of the semifinalists.
Once Rocknak was selected as a finalist in the spring of 2024, she only had 10 to 12 weeks to create a small model of the sculpture she envisioned. “That is not a lot of time,” she said.
She made one site visit to New Bedford. She took photos of the proposed site for the statue, visited the Whaling Museum and toured the 200-year-old church called Seamen’s Bethel.
To complete the project while working full-time teaching students at Hartwick College, she would get up at 5 a.m. and sculpt for six hours a day for six months, she said.
She created “Melville and Jonah’s Journey” in a heated garage in Oneonta in the middle of winter, she said.
In a speech she gave on Aug. 14 before her sculpture was unveiled, Rocknak said, “So I wanted the sculpture outside to bring those worlds together: Melville, Ishmael and Jonah; the whale and the sea; and this particular place in New Bedford where their journeys converge.”
To appreciate the thinking and research Rocknak applied to this project, it helps to know a bit about the author and be refreshed about the story of “Moby-Dick.”
Melville’s decision to move to New Bedford and hunt whales for 18 months changed the course of his career. He drew upon his own experiences at sea while writing the novel in 1850 and 1851.
Ishmael is the first-person narrator of “Moby-Dick” and sole survivor of a doomed whaling ship in the novel.
Jonah is a character in the biblical parable who was spit out of the mouth of a whale (or fish) after three days. The story of Jonah is used in a sermon in the novel.
“All three go to sea. All three return from the ordeal. All three return with a story to tell … the bones are where Jonah, Ishmael and Melville meet,” Rocknak said.
For more information, visit https://www.steffrocknak.net/new-page-1.