Thank you to the women of The Most Blessed Sacrament Church for allowing me the opportunity to speak.

Inside Beacon Hill State House Bela Pratt / Sculptor Bronze / Granite


With its tender caress, the sculptured War Nurses rightfully represent all nurses, in all wars, a moving masterpiece.

Built largely of Pavonazzo marble this room houses Nurses’ Hall because of the statue of an Army war nurse located here. Sculpted in 1914 by Bela Pratt, it was the first statue erected in honor of the women of the North after the Civil War.

Pratt traveled to Paris, where he trained with sculptors Henri- Michel-Antoine Chapu(1833-1891) and Alexandre Falguière .

In 1892, he returned to the United States to create two large sculptural groups representing The Genius of Navigation for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also produced sculptures for the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo in 1901. In 1893, he began a 25-year career as an influential teacher of modeling in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

During this time, Pratt sculpted a series of busts of Boston’s intellectual community, including Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks (1899, Brooks House, Harvard University), Colonel Henry Lee (1902, Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and Boston Symphony Orchestra founder Henry Lee Higginson (1909, Symphony Hall, Boston).

He became an associate of the National Academy in 1900.
When Saint-Gaudens’ uncompleted group for the entrance to the Boston Public Library was rejected, Pratt was awarded a commission for personifications of Art and Science. Pratt continued Saint-Gaudens’ influence in coin design after 1907. His gold Indian Head half ($5) and quarter ($2.50) eagles are known as the “Pratt coins” and feature an unusual intaglio Indian head, the U.S. mint’s only recessed design in circula- tion. A retrospective exhibition of 125 of his sculptures was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the spring of 1918. 


"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Faneuil Hall Book Store, Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Spring / Summer Talk Schedule 2014 for "Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" Book

April 29 2014 at 7:30 PM IN THE MOST BLESSED SACREMENT CHURCH HALL LOCATED ON 1155 MAIN STREET, WAKEFIELD MA.



MAY 2, 2014 AT THE DIAMOND SCHOOL LEXINGTON, MA AT 1:00 PM


JULY 3, 2014 AT THE SHERATON BOSTON HOTEL BACK BAY BOSTON,  MA. AT THE ANNUAL MENSA SOCIETY GATHERING 12;00 PM

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Faneuil Hall Book Store, Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Poe is Back In Boston This October 4, 2014. (Reprinted news article)

The tale has been years in the making, but it appears the fate is set for a public sculpture in Boston of native son Edgar Allan Poe.

The horror master who conjured creepy classics such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven” criticized Boston writers during his time here in the 1800s. And they reciprocated in earnest.

A sculpture of Edgar Allan Poe, the horror master who conjured creepy classics such as “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Raven.” It will be unveiled on Oct. 4. at at the intersection of Charles and Boylston Streets. (Courtesy Stefanie Rocknak)

Even so, a lot of people, including Boston College literature professor Paul Lewis, have spent years ardently defending Poe’s roots.

Lewis chairs the Poe Foundation of Boston, which has been orchestrating fundraising efforts for the $225,000 project. The campaign to memorialize the Victorian author’s connections to Boston with a public artwork began in 2009. Now Lewis says it’s great to have arrived at this point in the notoriously long process.

“The level of support we’ve received from the city, from donors large and small, demonstrates that Bostonians are ready — finally — to embrace Poe,” Lewis remarked, making sure to point out Poe was born in Boston in 1809*.

A $10,000 grant from the Lynch Foundation cemented the project’s destiny. It also received money from the city of Boston through the Edward Ingersoll Browne Trust Fund. Modern horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha contributed to the project as well, along with local businesses and private citizens/fans of the macabre.

Artist Stefanie Rocknak’s bronze sculpture titled, ‘Poe Returning to Boston,’ was chosen from a pool of 265 proposals. (Courtesy Paul Lewis/Poe Foundation of Boston)

Artist Stefanie Rocknak’s bronze sculpture, titled “Poe Returning to Boston,” is being fabricated at New England Sculpture Services in Chelsea. Her design was chosen from a pool of 265 proposals.

“I hope that Boston will enjoy this tribute to Poe for years to come,” Rocknak wrote in an email. She also added an update on the process. “The sculpture is now being cast (in pieces). After all these pieces are cast, the foundry will start to reassemble them–this should happen in a couple of months. After it is completely assembled, the patina will be applied.”

Rocknak looks forward to the day her striding figure will be secured in its final resting place at the intersection of Charles and Boylston streets. The unveiling is set for Oct. 4, just three days before the 165th anniversary of the writer’s death.

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores. 

Why Banish Monuments; American Sculptures!

Just recently the "Triumph of Civic Virtue" a statue in New York City was moved to a cemetery in that same city. The reasoning for this banishment of the carrara marble monument was " it depicts sexist imagery about women".

The statue created in 1922 was originally depicting a representation of victory of Civic Virtue, symbolized by a naked muscular man, stepping on vice and corruption represented by two naked mermaids not women. Today an interpretation by a New York City politician stated that this statue was sexist and demeaning to women. The two female figures are mythological Roman or Greek mermaids, not women. This is a blatant misinterpretation of the meaning of this beautiful carrara sculpture.

Current, moral perceptions of women being preyed upon by men now or in the past is misleadingly read into this 1922 sculpture.

These forms beneath the ideological "Civic Virtue" are not women but sirens, mermaids of danger corruption. The message of the "Triumph of Civic Virtue" over vice and corruption is still relevant in our society today, especially to those public servants residing in New York City or any American city.

Another monument in Central Park, "J. Marion Sims" statue 1892, father of modern gynecology, who more recently was found to have experimented on female slaves, maybe banished as well.

I believe if we keeping judging these human events or leaders of our past carved in stone or shaped in bronze, we will surely banish a lot more historical leaders. Some great art and sculpture will be also in danger, much like book burning in the past American and  European history.

Monuments of men and women, leaders in their various fields, are mentors who must be emulated for their good and positive characteristics not their faults. It is their faults that make them human. We as people must see the difference. Banishment is not the answer in this case.

"Boston Bronze and Stone Speak To Us" can be purchased at the following locations: Old North Church Gift Store, Bestsellers Bookstore Cafe, USS Constitution Museum Gift Sore, Museum Of Science Gift Store, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble Book Stores.