St. Paul’s Monastery and Benedictine Center
June 11, 2025
The artist who created our recently installed St. Scholastica sculpture was on site on June 10-12 to participate in its blessing and dedication. The following article is a result of a short chat with her on what brought her to this moment in her life and what the process of creating a bronze sculpture is like. We are grateful to her for coming to participate and taking the time to answer our questions.
Linda Dabeau lives just outside of Albuquerque in Corrales, New Mexico. She has a spectacular view of the Sandea mountains from her home. Her studio is located right on site and is just large enough to accommodate the building of her larger sculptures. She says the area where she lives attracts people from California and Texas. It is “God’s country” with an earthy feeling from the sky and mountains and a light that is spiritual, which has attracted many artists just like her.
She began her life in Dallas, Texas where she lived until she was 9 years old. Her parents worked in coffee and therefore travelled throughout Latin America and eventually settled in Costa Rica. She lived there for 11 years and eventually returned to Dallas as a teen, but eventually wound up studying painting in Mexico City where she received her Masters in Painting. Deep down however, she has always been a sculptor, she began creating clay sculptures in her early childhood.
Her life travelling in Latin America and experiencing the cultural locations of the Aztecs and Inca influenced her development as a sculptor. Her first works were created when she moved to New Mexico. She refers to them as Spirit Guides. These are her own style and proved to be very popular, helping her to appear in magazines throughout the United States.
As word about her spread, she was approached by Father Joe Garner, who asked her to design four saints out of fired clay. This is the experience that helped her to realize a strong interest in designs related to her own Catholic background. From there she took on work from churches in Texas and Albuquerque. Her path bloomed and she developed a sense of the spirituality in her work that would evoke prayer. It was as if this was what was meant for her all along.
As time has past, Linda has worked in clay, wood, stone, bronze, and glass. In one case, she worked with opalescent glass from a company she researched in Kokomo, Indiana. This sculpture is in North Dakota at St. Mary University. The student union there was designed with a skylight, but the light and heat it created were much too harsh. Linda created a piece that would bring that light into a softer focus with a golden essence. She created large sails that curved into the skylight and framed them with the opalescent glass. Her work helped to create a more spiritual space for the students.
Linda Dabeau designed the Monastery’s statue of St. Benedict and returned this week for the dedication and blessing of her second of St. Scholastica. The Sisters commissioned her with the help of a donation from Jack Farrell (01/17/1942-08/12/2024) who announced his gift during the Christmas at the Monastery celebrations in 2023.
The sculpture of St. Scholastica began with instruction from the Sisters to have her hand elevated and to make her look like she was walking. Linda Dabeau prepared variations for them to see and choose from. In addition to this initial instruction on the design, Linda says she researches all the Saints’ whose sculptures she creates. In this case, she read about St. Benedict and his vision of a dove going up into the sky which he saw as St. Scholastica’s soul essence. This is why the sculpture of St. Scholastica is one where she is holding up a dove about to fly. This is the symbol of her spirituality.
Linda believes that artists develop a mindset based on feeling that comes out in their work, She sees her sculpture as a physical symbol of prayer and says, “Prayer in physical form, if it is felt by the artist, then those who see it can feel it.”
The process of getting a sculpture like this from conception to installation is a lot of work for the artist. Likely the easy part is the preliminary sketches and the initial small, clay model referred to as a maquette. Getting this maquette to full size requires work with various materials to build up the figure to which a layer of gesso is applied. The final step is applying modeling clay to sculpt out the finer details. This piece then has to be cut into sections for molding.
The process for molding the sculpture is referred to as the “lost-wax method.” The artist uses the sections to create molds into which layers of wax are painted. The wax must be painted in layers to ensure that the final will show all the details the artist created. Once this wax is dry, the exterior of the piece must also be coated in layers. Once this process is all complete, the wax is melted out. The form that is left then heads to the foundry.
Linda must be available to the foundry itself regularly to ensure there are no mistakes. The foundry will fire ingots of bronze, and then use giant ladles to pour molten bronze into the form. Remember the sculpture is in pieces at this stage, so once this bronze is cooled, the whole has to be welded together and sandblasted. Finally, the foundry creates the sculpture’s patina. This is created from a specific chemical formula which must be applied to hot metal for it to adhere properly. Therefore, the whole piece is heated over with a blow torch.
If this completed sculpture meets with Linda’s approval, it now has to be crated, shipped, and installed. In the Monastery’s case, to ensure that the final steps went smoothly she brought on a local sculptor, Nicholas Legeros to complete the installation on site.
As of this writing, June 11, 2025, St. Scholastica has been in place at the Monastery for about a month. On this day, the Sisters welcomed the artist to stay on site and participate in the blessing and dedication. Linda, being from New Mexico said, “this is the most humidity I have had all year.”
The group walked out into a subtle rain to say prayers over the statue and expressed their gratitude. Sister Linda Soler reminded us that the rain is very appropriate. St. Scholastica is well known for her prayer to the Lord to send a rainstorm, so she could keep her brother with her long into the night.
Linda Dabeau speaks of the sculpture as a symbol for spirituality and a physical form of prayer. This St. Scholastica sculpture is placed not only to assist in visitors’ spirituality but as well to remind them of her as a model for contemplative strength, holy friendship, spiritual insight, wisdom and deep communion with God. We hope all who see her at the Monastery are inspired by this new addition.
