WASHINGTON (RNS) — Six feet above the vaulted entranceway to Washington National Cathedral, the rough contours of Rosa Parks’ face are taking shape.
Using a motorized hammer and chiseling tools that date back centuries, stone carver Sean Callahan is working patiently on a new bust of the civil rights heroine.
“I have to be aware of the significance of it,” he said. “It puts pressure on me to get it right. I have to pay respect to her in that sense.”
Stone carver Sean Callahan measures a plaster cast of a Rosa Parks sculpture that will be carved into the “Human Rights Porch” at Washington National Cathedral. (RNS PHOTO/Courtesy Craig W. Stapert/Washington National Cathedral)
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Across the Human Rights “porch” in the cathedral’s narthex, Parks soon will be joined by another famous woman, Mother Teresa.
Callahan, a 45-year-old Catholic, was not alive when Parks made history by staying seated on a segregated bus and helping spark the civil rights movement; but he remembers hearing about Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun, when he was growing up.
Starting with Parks, Callahan is using a pointing machine, whose brass arms adjust as he measures a plaster model that acts as an exact guide for the carving, chiseled from a block of stone in the narthex.
“It’s kind of like a three-dimensional connecting the dots,” Callahan said.
He carefully places the machine within 1/16th of an inch of the model before shifting the device to his stone canvas nearby.
“If you mismeasure this, then everything’s off,” he explained.
The delicate details of Parks’ face will surface from what at first looks like a mass of dots and parallel chiseled lines. The dots indicate how far down he must chisel each part of the stone to develop the contours of the finished bust.
Eventually, he will have to leave the machine behind and do the final work by eye, which, he says, is the toughest part.
“Portraits are particularly difficult because everyone recognizes them,” he said. “If you’re doing something like a hand or a gargoyle, it’s not as critical. But it’s an indefinable thing to make the face come alive. It’s hard to explain, but that’s just something that takes patience and practice to get the hang of.”
Callahan, who worked as an apprentice under stone carvers at the cathedral in the 1980s, has done restoration work on the White House exterior and gargoyles in private gardens. The cathedral hired him six years ago.
As he stands amid temporary scaffolding, a carving of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt peeks over his shoulder.
Others already enshrined in the “human rights” portal include slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero and Bishop John Walker, the first black Episcopal bishop of Washington.
“The people selected to appear in the iconography of the Human Rights Porch were chosen because of their extraordinary actions and contributions to the cause of human rights, social justice and the welfare of their fellow human beings,” said Samuel T. Lloyd III, dean of the cathedral.
Callahan’s work began a week before the country marked the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., with whom Parks worked closely. The sculptures of Parks and Mother Teresa, based on clay models by North Carolina sculptor Chas Fagan, are due to be completed by Easter.
“That quiet strength is, I think, the common denominator,” Fagan said of the two women he sculpted. “Rosa Parks definitely showed it with her actions and through her own life, and the same with Mother Teresa.”
Fagan, 45, who crafted the sculpture of President Ronald Reagan that stands in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, worked with cathedral craftsmen to complete the model so the faces of the women fit artistically within the cathedral’s architecture. While he could “fix my mistakes” as he sculpted, he said, there’s “no wiggle room” when Callahan gets to the carving stage.
With these figures, the landmark cathedral that was officially finished in 1990 is educating worshippers just like the cathedrals of old, Fagan said.
“Now that the structural stuff is complete, there’s a chance to do what all the other cathedrals did in their own time,” he said. “Just fill all the niches and teach through the art.”