“I feel that I was born with a crayon in my hand,” Dominican Sister of Hope Sylvia Bielen, O.P. says. This weekend, The Mariandale Center celebrated her lifelong commitment to art in many forms —including painting, calligraphy, and watercolor— at her art show,...
On a cloudy spring afternoon as she strolls through the Wartburg where she lives, Dominican Sister of Hope Marion Michael Beagen, OP points out blossoming trees and violet buds among the grass. For a Jersey-City native who spent most of her life in Newburgh, Sister...
When Dominican Sister of Hope Mary Ellen Wisner, OP was a small child, her mother taught her and her two sisters to draw. As the girls sat around the kitchen table in the early evenings, they slowly learned about the principles of perspective. As such, all three...
When Mary Jane Miller’s friend proposed that they paint icons in the church basement one Wednesday afternoon, she thought he was crazy. “We don’t know a thing about icons!” she protested. The pair had no formal training –save a one-week iconography class— and Mary...
