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NEW BEDFORD — A new statue depicting “Moby-Dick” author Herman Melville encircled by a swirl of ocean waves and whale ribs will stand on the grounds of Seamen’s Bethel early next year.
City leaders revealed artist Stefanie Rocknak’s design inside the historic chapel on Friday morning.
The work’s title is “Melville and Jonah’s Journey,” inspired by the famous sermon of Jonah and the whale from Chapter 9 of “Moby-Dick.” It will stand about 7½ feet tall, Rocknak said. A granite base inscribed with Melville’s hymn of the tale will support the bronze statue.
“The ribs and terrors in the whale”
The ribs and terrors in the whale,
Arched over me a dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by,
And left me deepening down to doom.
I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
Oh, I was plunging to despair.
In black distress, I called my God,
When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints—
No more the whale did me confine.
With speed he flew to my relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightening shone
The face of my Deliverer God.
Melville boarded a whaling ship from New Bedford harbor exactly 184 years before Friday’s announcement. His adventure inspired him to write “Moby-Dick” a decade later. The first part of the novel is set in New Bedford, and the chapel where Father Mapple delivers his sermon about Jonah and the whale is based on Seamen’s Bethel.
To come up with the design, Rocknak re-listened to a “Moby-Dick” audiobook as she sculpted in her studio.
“I just saw the ribs,” she said. “I just thought, he has to be rising out of the ribs.”
The artist said she saw a parallel between Melville and Jonah, both of whom returned from a transformative journey with a “truth” to tell. It’s why Melville is depicted with his mouth open, as if telling the story of “Moby-Dick.”
Rocknak is a sculptor and the chair of the philosophy department at Hartwick College in New York. She previously sculpted an Edgar Allan Poe statue in Boston and created a model of the Venus of Lespugue figure for artist Robert Morris to be permanently installed in The Gori Collection in Italy, according to her bio.
Melville statue selection committee
- Janet Barbosa — Mayor’s Office, City of New Bedford
- Alexandra Copeland — Art Curator for New Bedford Free Public Library
- Amy Desrosiers — Tourism & Marketing Manager for the City of New Bedford
- Ymelda Laxton — Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art for The Whaling Museum
- Jim Lopes — New Bedford Historical Commission
- Anne Louro — Assistant City Planner for the City of New Bedford
- Arthur Motta — Historian for the City of New Bedford
- Bruce Oliveira — New Bedford Port Society member
- Phil Oliveira — New Bedford Port Society member
- Margo Saulnier — Director of Creative Strategies for New Bedford Creative
- Jennifer Smith — Superintendent of New Bedford Whaling Historical National Park
- Dr. Robert Wallace — member of the Melville Society and author of “Douglass and Melville”
She was one of 41 artists who submitted proposals to the city last year. A committee of arts and city planners gave four finalists $2,500 stipends to submit full statue designs in October.
“Stephanie Rocknak’s design stood out immediately,” said Alexandra Copeland, the New Bedford Free Public Library’s art curator and a member of the selection committee. “We were impressed with her ability to connect Melville with the specter of the whale.”
The city should have put up a statue like this a century ago, Mayor Jon Mitchell said. It already has statues honoring Frederick Douglass, State Rep. Tom Lopes, and whalers and fishermen in general.
“We should have the confidence to say — and I mean this metaphorically — we own Melville,” Mitchell said. “Melville put New Bedford on the map.”
The statue will be displayed prominently just outside Seamen’s Bethel on Johnny Cake Hill, right across from the Whaling Museum. Some 10,000 tourists visit Seamen’s Bethel every year, according to Phil Oliveira, a member of the New Bedford Port Society, which owns the chapel and adjacent Mariner’s Home.
The mayor said he hopes the statue will become a tourist attraction. But it’s also a way for the city to “proclaim its identity,” he said.
Rocknak couldn’t attend the unveiling because of a case of COVID. She gave brief remarks via Zoom and spoke to The Light afterwards in a phone interview.
At first, she wasn’t sure how viewers would respond to the ribs in her design. She wondered: Would it be too morbid? But she felt better about her choice after a trip to the Whaling Museum, which houses several whale skeletons — whalebone is a familiar sight to locals, she realized.
Rocknak said she tries to capture historical figures inside and out when she sculpts them. That’s where the dynamic design of the Melville statue comes from.
“That’s his literary, his poetic energy, so to speak,” she said.
Melville’s calm expression amid the swirl reflects his careful personality, Rocknak said. Only someone as patient as he could write such deliberately exhaustive descriptions and lists in the middle of a whaling adventure story, she said.
The statue’s connection to the site where it stands is what Rocknak is most proud of, she said.
“This is New Bedford’s statue,” she said. “You couldn’t pick it up and put it on Nantucket.”
The statue will cost about $300,000, Mitchell said. Up to $50,000 will be paid for by the New Bedford Port Society, which is accepting donations. The rest will be paid for by city funds including Community Preservation Act revenue. Also, $10,000 in pandemic relief funds was spent on the design process, according to a recent city spending report.
Now that Rocknak’s design has been selected, she will sculpt a large clay model that will be scanned, enlarged, and cast in bronze at a foundry in New York. That process and the installation is expected to take about 12-15 months.
Friday’s unveiling preceded the Whaling Museum’s 29th annual Moby-Dick Marathon starting on Saturday, in which volunteers will take turns reading Melville’s novel cover-to-cover over the course of 25 hours.
Email Grace Ferguson at gferguson@newbedfordlight.org
Too cartoony for my taste, but I’m sure it will look fine once installed. Better than a lot of other recent public art pieces.
According to this article, “Community Preservation Act revenue,” as well as other “city funds,” will in large part pay for this statue. Why CPA money? What is being preserved? Certainly not regard for us property owners. We property owners just got walloped with yet another significant real estate tax increase, and since we property owners are the ones who contribute to CPA revenue, we are apparently paying a large portion for this statue, too. Voters, especially homeowners, of New Bedford, are you ready now to use your power on election day this November to stop this abuse?