Reflections Magazine Issue #54 - Fall 2000 | Page 10

A Legacy
of Artists

10

ister Helene often told her students
that she was educating them “not
for today, but for 25 years from
today.” At the time, I wondered just what
she meant.
Now, more than 50 years later, I can honestly say I have used the lessons she taught
us in all the years that followed. Not only
lessons in art, but in meeting the challenges
of life as well.
Studio Angelico, appropriately named to
honor Fra Angelico, a 15th century Italian
Dominican friar, was set up on a guild system. In the guild system, small shops were
organized for the welfare and education of
members to promote the making of art (with
a little “a,” Sister was always quick to add).
We students were like those apprentices,
learning under the direction of experienced,
working artists and assisting with whatever
commissions they happened to be working
on at the time.
The Studio was comprised of several

Studio Angelico in the 1940s:

Lessons in art and life
By Lois Hueneman Chazaud ‘49

small, specialized shops either of a permanent
nature or set up as a need arose. The Weaving
Shop, Sculpture and Pottery Shop, Drawing
and Painting Studio, and the Scriptorium (for
calligraphy and printmaking) were of a more
permanent nature. Class presentations were
called “demonstrations” and were conducted
by the artists, such as Mr. Melville Steinfels,
or Sister herself. Demonstrations were held
once, twice, or three times a week depending
on the number of credit hours given for the
subject. For some classes, Sister figured the
number of hours per week, the complexity of
the subject, and multiplied by the number of
weeks in a semester to determine the number
of hours of work needed to satisfy a course
requirement and master a skill.
As we worked, we marked our hours
on index cards kept in metal boxes in each
shop. The cards contained the students’
names, the name of the course, and number
of hours required. We were encouraged to
spend our free time working in the Studio,
but no one needed encouragement. Most of

us found it necessary to work evenings and
sometimes weekends to meet deadlines for
assignments. Frequently the number of hours
we recorded on the cards far exceeded the
number required. With the system Sister
devised, for earning credits in courses that
simply required hours of practice to master
a skill and produce work of the caliber she
demanded, art majors were able to accelerate
in many of the basic art courses.
As students gained knowledge and skills,
some naturally excelled in one area over another. On occasion, such a person was asked
to supervise a workshop. This was the case
with Lena Sylvester, one of my classmates.
Lena was blind, but oh! What a taskmaster
she was in the Weaving Shop! She taught
me to warp, thread the loom, and weave, and
checked my progress every evening. Those
skilled fingers of hers, so accustomed to
reading Braille, found all my mistakes. Nothing escaped her attention. She took special
pride in the high ]X[]Hو