The Swimmer forever immortalized in Larry Nowlan's high-relief, bronze sculpture is Jack Sieg, the varsity swimmer who helped Coach Dave Armbruster make his last and most well-known discovery in 1932: the butterfly stroke.

Nowlan's work is based on a photograph of Seig that Armbruster had commissioned to help study the athlete's movement, and document the new invention. Nowlan worked from this photograph to create a dynamic high relief, similar to the Ironmen relief, in Kinnick Stadium.

Larry Nowlan, a Vermont sculptor, was an artist of the new school of realism. He was inspired by both the past and the natural world, yet did not copy directly from nature. Many of his works directly reflect the humanity, emotions, troubles and triumphs of an individual. He was first attracted to sculpture by the powerful forms of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and preceded to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1993 followed by a MA at the New York Academy of Art Graduate School of Figurative Art.