NEA grant supports institute’s printmaking collaboration with Catholic Worker

May 14, 2026

Every week, students in the Institute for Social Concerns’ Art and Social Change course entered the Our Lady of the Road drop-in center, where they were greeted by a quote from Dorothy Day: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes in community.” For these students, the quote is not just a line; it is the research framework for a semester of deep community engagement. Inside the center, the air is thick with the scent of ink as students and community members work side-by-side, carving linoleum blocks in a rhythmic, shared effort to transform concepts of justice into tangible art.

*Notre Dame student Rachel Govathoti, left, works with community members on printmaking project at Our Lady of the Road*

This collaborative environment is the centerpiece of a significant initiative supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) through the Chair’s Extraordinary Action Award. As part of the NEA’s Celebrating America250 program, the Institute for Social Concerns launched the project “Cultivating Beauty through Printmaking.” The project puts the institute’s mission into practice, utilizing research and arts engagement to promote the dignity and wellbeing of populations often unseen or unheard.

By partnering with the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker—a local community that runs the drop-in center—the institute has created an innovative story lab where academic inquiry meets community flourishing. The project honors the legacies of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, two American exemplars of mercy and hospitality, by using their writings to spark an embodied conversation between campus and city residents.

*Jon Schommer, right, presents prints to the Most Reverend Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who visited the center to bless the printmaking tools*

“I am a printmaker because of the Catholic Worker, which is to say: I am a printmaker because of Dorothy Day,” said Rachel Mills, a printmaker living and working at the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker House who created the portrait of Day for the project. “I began creating prints in dialogue with the tradition of printmaking in the movement and continue to find creativity in this lived conversation.”

Through the grant-supported workshops, participants conceptualized, designed, and carved linoleum blocks. The resulting works—on both paper and fabric—became a physical manifestation of the values Day and Merton held dear. The fabric prints were sewn into quilts, symbolizing the individual’s place within the larger community, while framed paper prints offered a striking, graphic testimony to the Gospel of Mercy.

“The slow and attentive process of printmaking shows the care all the creators have to put into their final product,” said Gia Villegas ’26, a science business major and student in the course, “and it has been an amazing and beautiful process doing it alongside others.”

*Students Rena Hassan, left, and Mayalen Fortoul Belausteguigoitia, middle, share portrait of Dorothy Day to attendee of the Dorothy Day & Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good Symposium*

Jon Schommer, executive director at Our Lady of the Road, stated, “It has been such a gift to have this printmaking workshop hosted at Our Lady of the Road drop-in center to empower our own community to participate in this tradition of beauty as healing.”

The portraits of Day and Merton found an audience on campus as they were featured at the Franco Institute’s inaugural Dorothy Day & Thomas Merton Culture and the Public Good Symposium in April. For the students in the Art and Social Change course, this was an opportunity to engage with conference attendees, sharing their creative process and the insights they gained from the literature. This fall, the works will be permanently installed at Our Lady of the Road to commemorate its 20th anniversary of providing care to the community.

This NEA grant–supported project is the latest initiative to emerge from the institute’s South Bend Citizens Collaboratory. By hosting creative projects in schools, neighborhoods, and community centers, the Collaboratory’s story lab creates a platform for people from different walks of life to tell their stories through art. These programs are designed to honor the dignity of all participants by providing the resources and space to express their own history, culture, and identity.