About the Artist

Steff Rocknak is a figurative sculptor whose work explores narrative and the psychological presence of the human form. Working in wood, bronze, and clay, she creates figures that often appear caught in moments of movement and transformation. Her work ranges from intimately scaled carved figures to large-scale public sculpture.

Rocknak’s major public works include Poe Returning to Boston, a life-size bronze sculpture of Edgar Allan Poe commissioned for the city of his birth. Selected from a field of 265 artists, the sculpture was permanently installed in Boston’s Edgar Allan Poe Square in 2014. In 2024, Rocknak was selected from 41 proposals to create Melville and Jonah’s Journey, a 7 foot bronze sculpture of Herman Melville for New Bedford, Massachusetts. Installed outside the historic Seamen’s Bethel in August 2026, the work draws upon Melville’s connection to New Bedford, the story of Jonah, and the imagery of Moby-Dick.

Other projects include a sculptural model created for Robert Morris in 2011, which was digitally enlarged to nine feet, cast in bronze, and permanently installed in the Gori Collection at Fattoria di Celle in Pistoia, Italy. In 2018, Rocknak was selected from 120 candidates as one of five finalists for the National Native American Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. She received the National Sculpture Society’s Alex J. Ettl Grant in 2019 and was elected to the National Sculpture Society in 2020, and advanced to Fellow (FNSS) in 2025.

Rocknak’s sculpture has been exhibited at venues including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Grolier Club, and the Tampa Museum of Art. Her work and public sculptures have received extensive national and international coverage, most recently in Smithsonian Magazine, Artnet, and The Boston Globe, as well as The New York Times, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement.

Rocknak is a self-taught sculptor and holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University. A scholar of David Hume and the philosophy of art, she is the author of Imagined Causes: Hume’s Conception of Objects (Springer, 2013), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. She is Chair and Professor of Philosophy at Hartwick College.

Complete CV (updated 2026).