The art of it all
Piece by piece, students and community members chose bits of colored glass that together represented the Dayton city skyline. Their work together also demonstrated the community connections Molly Keane-Sexton ’95 cultivates in students in her English courses at the University of Dayton.
The new mosaic was created during the third annual Imagining Community Symposium held at The Hub in downtown Dayton in April. The art piece, facilitated by students in the Business and Professional Writing class taught by Keane-Sexton, allowed community members to engage with UD students in collaborative art. The mosaic was completed over two days.
This is not Keane-Sexton’s first experience with building mosaics for the community; the lecturer previously collaborated with the Mosaic Institute of Greater Dayton, a nonprofit that facilitates large-scale collaborative art projects, to build the Seed of Life Mosaic — a memorial for the victims of the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton.
More than 3,000 individuals helped create and install that mosaic.
“We really collaborated because [our community members] believe in engaged art,” Keane-Sexton said.
The success of the Seed of Life Mosaic sparked the idea for a similar art project at UD’s Imagining Community Symposium, an annual community conference coordinated by the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community that brings together community members, nonprofit organizations, and UD faculty, staff and students to engage in dialogue, presentations, artistic representations and workshops around a topic identified by Dayton community members as in need of engagement.
Founder of the Mosaic Institute, Jes McMillan, suggested a focus on new mosaics in East Dayton’s neighborhoods, and the Fitz Center jumped on board as a community partner. Keane-Sexton and McMillan ended up receiving a Fitz Center fellowship for their work, and Keane-Sexton believes that was meant to be.
“If this isn’t God working in my life, I don’t know what is.”
“If this isn’t God working in my life, I don’t know what is,” she said. “It’s the pinnacle of my career to have this Fitz Center Leadership fellowship and work for Brother [Raymond] Fitz to continue his mission and the Marianist mission.”
Keane-Sexton, who earned her secondary education bachelor’s degree, a master’s in English and a doctorate in leadership — all from UD — is passionate about having students involved in her projects for the community.
“We would not have gotten the mosaic completed in two days without their work, so I really appreciate them and they really loved it,” Keane-Sexton said about her students.
Ben Schoen ’25 said he met several engaged Dayton residents at the symposium and enjoyed having conversations outside of the UD campus. Schoen said he connects with Keane-Sexton’s interactive teaching style, recalling a lesson for writing instructions to build Legos that improved their professional writing abilities.
“She’s really insightful and brings a lot of things she’s experienced in the real world to the class,” he said.
Keane-Sexton’s educational aims extend beyond the classroom. She wants her students to achieve happiness outside of just achieving wealth and build meaningful lives for themselves through philanthropy.
“I want them to see their purpose and their vocational calling in life so that they can have the best life that is available to them — and that's through giving to others,” she said.
Keane-Sexton said she plans to continue collaborating with the Mosaic Institute on future projects. She is also planning to present a new play she wrote with local playwright Steven Spencer, titled Sacred Hearts for the Age of Sedation, to help people with addiction.
“We think art can heal people,” she said. “We need the arts to be human and collaborative, and art can bring so much wealth to a community through community engagement.”
photos by Sylvia Stahl