Queen of Angels students, staff create a legacy with mosaic

A mosaic in the design of a Western Pennsylvania landscape — rolling hills, clouds in a blue sky with a shining sun — is framed around the doorway at the Queen of Angels Catholic School in North Huntingdon, a legacy for the students, staff and the artist who worked on it.

“It was exciting to know I was contributing to something that will be in the school for a while,” said Olivia Naylor, 14, of North Huntingdon, who was one of two eighth grade students last year who contributed to the project.

“Working as a school, we made something the whole school could enjoy,” said Sullivan Muzy, 14, of North Huntingdon.

Students involved will remember it when they graduate from Queen of Angels, said Muzy, who along with Naylor is now a ninth grade student at Serra Catholic High School in McKeesport.

Teacher Emily Croft and artist-in-residence Amy Roadman of Stahlstown, along with students in pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, put together hundreds of pieces of glass and ceramic for the design installed around the frame of a doorway that leads to the school’s chapel.

The project was three years in the making, something Croft and Jennifer Felak, Queen of Angels principal, discussed, said Croft, who serves as science, technology, religion, engineering, art and math teacher.

“We wanted a little more substantial, a little bigger legacy project,” Croft said.

Croft said she reached out to Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, which funds the artist-in-residence initiative in the region. She knew about the program through her work with the Carnegie Museum of Art.

“I knew I needed to team up with someone. I needed help to make our vision a reality,” Croft said.

Naylor said she and Sullivan, Croft and Roadman started designing the mosaic in January. They took inspiration for the landscape theme of the design from the school’s crest, which references the “bright horizons of our students,” Croft said.

The glass and ceramic pieces were placed on 11 separate pieces of tile subflooring coated with an adhesive material. The boards were attached to the wall around the door frame this summer.

The fun part was breaking the pieces of ceramic and then putting them together like a puzzle to create a scene of grassy rolling hills, blue sky and the sun with rays, said Naylor, an artist who works primarily in drawings using pencils, markers and digital technology.

“We used a lot of recycled material such as tea cups, dishes and broken glass … with the eighth graders breaking the pieces,” Roadman said.

The Pittsburgh Glass Center donated some scrap glass and Ridge View Acres Farm near Stahlstown donated flat, clear marble, Roadman said.

They bunched together colored pieces for the elements of the design — yellow tiles for the sun, blue tiles for the sky and green tiles for the hills, Roadman said.

“They were basically making up their puzzle,” Roadman said.

Naylor said it was a group decision to place the mosaic around the door frame.

The public saw the finished piece during a school orientation on Aug. 19.

“I think it looks really good,” Naylor said.

Muzy also was pleased with the fruits of the labor of so many people.

“I’m really happy that the kids that graduate from Queen of Angels, they will have that on their mind,” Muzy said.