Jack
Howard-Potter
Media:
Sculpture, Drawing
Studio Location:
Wills Building, 43-50 11th Street, LIC NY 11101
Room/Studio#
200G
Website:
Artist Bio:
Jack Howard-Potter was born on January 2, 1975, in New York City. Growing up surrounded by the city’s vibrant public art—works by Alexander Calder, George Rickey, and others—inspired his lifelong fascination with movement, form, and the human body. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture and Art History from Union College in 1997, completing his thesis “Figurative Steel Sculpture” and creating fifteen life-size figurative steel works exploring contemporary interpretations of classical sculpture.
After college, Howard-Potter apprenticed with a blacksmith in Colorado, where he honed his understanding of metal’s physical properties and commercial applications. Returning to New York, he studied anatomy and drawing at the Art Students League under Anthony Palumbo, later serving as Palumbo’s assistant. This period of intense study—drawing the human figure daily for two years—gave him the anatomical mastery that continues to define his work.
Since 1997, Howard-Potter has exhibited widely in outdoor sculpture parks, museums, and public art installations across the United States. His monumental steel sculptures, characterized by dynamic motion and elegant balance, can be found in permanent and long-term displays in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, Illinois, and beyond.
In 2005, he completed The Muse, a 27-foot-tall figure soaring skyward in galvanized steel, marking a turning point in his career. More recently, in 2021, he unveiled The 1958 Championship Game for the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio—a 30-foot, six-thousand-pound depiction of Hall of Famer Raymond Berry in mid-dive, completed over eight months.
Howard-Potter resides in New York City with his wife, Erica, and their children, Skylar and Lyndon. He serves on the boards of The Art Students League and the Scripps Howard Foundation, attends ballet and dance performances to inform his sense of motion, and continues to create large-scale figurative sculptures, most recently completing a commission for the city of Palm Springs, California.
Artist Statement:
I work to capture movement in a medium that does not move. Using steel, which is an inherently rigid material, I work to convey a sense of fluid action in space. My work explores the wide range of movement of the human figure informed through my study of drawing the human anatomy. My sculptures seek to convey the motion of the body in extremely stressful and beautiful positions; the moment that a dancer is at the peak of a jump, the weightless split second before a body succumbs to gravity. I am describing an ephemeral action in steel to convey this moment for eternity. I want the viewer to visualize the actions that led up to a given pose and the actions that will follow it. Using the brightly colored surfaces separates the figures from the landscape, making them stand out in much the same way people do when they wear clothes. The brilliant colors serve as protection for the steel from the corrosive outdoor environment as well as adding excitement to the steel to aid in the sense of movement. The work explores the range of possibilities and flexibility of the material as well as the subject
