Reflections Magazine Issue #54 - Fall 2000 | Page 9

Sister Helene O’Connor and her
extraordinary legacy
he founder of Studio Angelico was an artist, poet and universal scholar.
Sister Helene O’Connor, the first
art professor at Siena and founder of Studio
Angelico, started life April 26, 1909, as Mary
Regina O’Connor, the oldest of six children
born to Corinne and Daniel O’Connor.
Born in California, Mary grew up in Chicago attending Catholic schools. She was a
precocious child from the beginning. She
loved the Dominican nuns and often made
herself a habit out of towels when playing
school with her siblings. Her mother, an artist and poet herself, eventually made Mary a
habit costume to play in. When Mary was 13,
her mother died and she began caring for her
five brothers and sisters. Her father remarried;
soon there were three more children. Mary
entered the Adrian Dominican novitiate at
17 in 1926. She took her vows and her new
name two years later.
In 1934, after studying art in Rome, Sister
Helene was assigned to teach art at Siena
Heights, then known as St. Joseph College.
By 1936, she named the art program Studio
Angelico after the great Dominican painter of
the Renaissance, Fra Angelico. Before long,
she decided the cramped quarters provided
in the basement of Sacred Heart Hall were
inadequate for the needs of her students. Sr.

Helene talked with the architect who was
finishing Archangelus and Benincasa Halls
and proposed using the attic of Sacred Heart
Hall for art classes. Even the architect was
astonished to realize the possibilities of the
space. In 1938, Studio Angelico opened in
its official home on the fifth floor of Sacred
Heart Hall.
As professor and chairperson of the Art
Department until 1956, Sr. Helene led Studio
Angelico to national stature, shaping it into a
liturgical center and a renowned resource for
artists. She established a broad curriculum
that included painting, sculpture, calligraphy,
metallurgy, fashion illustration, weaving, and
ecclesiastic art. She created liturgical pieces
for places of religious worship all over the
world. Her own artwork was exhibited in
galleries such as the Portland Museum of Art,
the Toledo Museum of Art, and the New York
Metropolitan Museum. In the midst of these
accomplishments, she completed her master’s
degree at Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Sr. Helene also was well trained in the
sciences and in 1956, after 20 years of
overwhelming productivity, she left Studio
Angelico and Siena Heights for a new and
equally productive career. For the next 23
years, she taught math and science to high

Fond Recollections of Sister Helene
By Mary Jo Stolpmann Fleming ‘47

So much has been said about the inspiration
we students derived from the Dominican Sisters. Sister Helene was foremost in this role.
Her department—and her students in the art
department—were her primary concern. For
the most part, Sister Helene did not relate
to the “outsiders”—students in departments
other than art. But to we who were the “chosen ones,” she was the last word. She