A Real Masterpiece

WHEN ASKED HOW HE 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 thinking. And first slab of vertical concrete. Once merely functional, Vogelgesang turned the and foremost, all 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.

The project, which looms over the playground of the longtime Catholic school, made manifest Vogelgesang’s oft-repeated 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 and stood for, so she enlisted the ideas of others. Roughly 500 of them, in fact, or one from each Wabbit in each grade, about what they liked best about Holy Souls.

Art and science and art and technology are so incredibly hand-in-hand and I think that is seriously overlooked in art classes.

“I wanted everyone to have ownership. I wanted everyone to have some pride in it,” she said. “The kids had the opportunity to tell their story, to figure out what symbols and what images they wanted in that mural to represent their school and their art. It’s kind of a Where’s Waldo thing; you can find a basketball for the kid who is drawn to the sports program, there’s a giant ruler, there’s a cheerleader.”

Vogelgesang melded the images into a giant collage and painted an outline of the work on the soaring concrete wall. Then, every student was given a brush and told to paint a segment. The only rule was no two adjoining segments could be the same color. The collaborative end result is a work that, while simple, mimics the stained-glass windows of the church and has become a beloved focal point of the parish grounds.

“Really, there’s absolutely nothing very complex or pretentious about it. It’s a super-simple formula,” Vogelgesang said. “But there’s a lot packed in, philosophically and technically, for art education.”

The mural is just one expression of Vogelgesang’s innovation as a teacher. From outdoor classrooms to artwork created through modern multimedia, hers is a program that seeks to connect as many dots in students’ education as possible.

“Art and science and art and technology are so incredibly hand-in-hand, and I think that is seriously overlooked in art classes,” she said. “I’ve had students ask if they could do stop-motion animation for an assignment instead of the traditional two-dimensional piece of paper, and it was a really interesting process. The younger generation is obviously much more tech-savvy, so being open to their ideas and seeing what they can come up with themselves has been a really fun way to incorporate technology and different media.”

Given all of this, you’d think Vogelgesang would have been at the top of her class throughout her educational years, but such was not the case. Formal education was difficult for her growing up, requiring extra time and patience from her teachers, including at Mount St. Mary where art was more of an escape than a strict course of study. Those experiences, combined with the caring example of her MSM mentors, still shape her perspective as a teacher.

“I have some learning differences; I’ve always struggled with ADHD, and traditional school settings were really difficult for me. I know what it’s like to be pulled into a small group and have my test read aloud,” she said. “I know what it’s like to have modifications in my education, but I also know what it’s like to have teachers invest in me, like at the Mount. And, I know what it’s like to have an art program that is, in a lot of ways, a place for kids like me to thrive, where it doesn’t have to be so academic.

“As a teacher, I think that’s something that has given me a lot of empathy for students who struggle a little bit more in school. I can look at them and be like, yep, I’ve been there.”