In the Flint Hills of rural Kansas, just above our small town of St. Marys, the New Immaculata continues to rise.
This rising is captured almost weekly in a watercolor notebook of mine.
I try to capture each picture on site, and then paint it later. Ideally, I would paint it on site, but the winter weather makes that difficult!
These were painted a couple days at a time during Christmas break.
If I can’t sketch while I’m there, I often focus on one thing to capture in my sketchbook later, either by memory, or with my phone or the phone of whoever is with me.
If you ever see me parked off the side of the road near the site, I am either sketching or trying to take the perfect picture!
My dad has been a willing photographer.
If you’ve noticed the pinkish sky in many pictures, it’s because I always send up at a local cemetery near dusk on evenings or on the way back to campus: the church building site is between those two locations.
One day I noticed a stray dog on the site and saw one of the workers petting him. It was a Kodak moment!
This last picture was done from memory. This man was the only worker I saw out on the site a couple days after Christmas.
It was a wet, icy, hazy day. A miserable day to be working outside.
Wind and freezing rain made things hazy and precarious, yet he was out there inspite of the bitter weather, while all around him faded into the grey icy mist.
Just as he quietly plugged away with no one there to cheer him on, so this church built to honor God and Our Lady, continues to rise quietly above our town.
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed these images in spite of the lack of many words.
I’d appreciate if you gave this post to like and shared it with others!
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Bridget Bryan 