Masterpiece
A R EAL
W
HE N AS K E D H OW H E CONCEIVED SUCH STATUES AS “DAVID” AND “PIETA,” MICHELANGELO IS CREDITED WITH SAYING, “THE SCULPTURE IS ALREADY COMPLETE WITHIN THE MARBLE BLOCK, BEFORE I START MY WORK. It is already there; I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” Kelley Donovan Vogelgesang ’03 could say the same thing about an industrial slab of vertical concrete. Once merely functional, Vogelgesang turned the massive surface into a brilliant mural with the help of the entire student body of Our Lady of the Holy Souls School in Little Rock, where she’s the art teacher.
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THE MESSENGER
The project, which looms over the playground of the longtime Catholic school, made manifest Vogelgesang’s oftrepeated philosophy to her students about the role of art in everyday life. “I always tell my students, art is a form of problem solving and critical thinking,” she said. “And first and foremost, all art is storytelling.” For this particular project, which was completed during the 2017–2018 school year, the goal was to tell the story of the 90-plus-year-old school and the parish community in which it resides. Despite growing up there herself, Vogelgesang didn’t want the design to be merely her interpretation of what Holy Souls meant
“ I always tell my
students, art is a form of problem solving and critical thinking. And first and foremost, all art is storytelling.
”
