debora lockwood

St. Veronica Art Teacher Serves as Unofficial Artist in Residence

By Mary Frances McCarthy
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 10/26/06)

When Father Marcus Pollard, pastor, undertook the task of building St. Veronica Church in Chantilly, he wanted to make sure he was able to do the most that he could with the money available to the parish. Many of the furnishings and statues in the church were bought from old churches that closed or consolidated, but this also meant that some pieces arrived in less than perfect condition.
Parishioner Debora Lockwood has loved art since she was young. She was sick as a child and not able to play sports; instead she took private art lessons.
“Looking back it’s kind of sad, but later on it all works out like a plan,” she said.
Before St. Veronica Church was built, Masses were celebrated in the school cafeteria. The parish was looking for a way to make it look a little more “Catholic.” While on a retreat, Lockwood saw stained-glass windows suspended from a window frame on chains and thought the parish could do that to decorate the cafeteria for Masses. She created 30 Plexiglas tiles that would be changed to correspond with different liturgical season.
Once the church was built, Father Pollard asked Lockwood to create panels for the windows behind the altar. She was hesitant at first, but because the windows are so high off the ground, it’s hard for people to tell that they aren’t made of glass.
While working on the sanctuary, Father Pollard received a statue of Mary that was badly damaged. Lockwood had always wanted to work on statues and wanted to try to repair it and Father Pollard said she could “as long as it doesn’t look worse than it does now.”
“I had never done statue work before and there’s not much you can find out about it,” she said.
She finished the statue and repainted it and the repair was satisfactory enough that Father Pollard asked her to restore a 90-year-old Daprato crucifix that he bought from a church that was closing.
Lockwood went to the rectory to see the statue with every intention of turning down the job.
“I remember kneeling down next to it and thinking ‘yes’ and it just happened,” she said.
“People have very good intentions when they paint things,” she said about the crucifix. “It looked like the Sunday school class had painted him.” Over the years as the original finish had cracked and peeled, the statue had been repainted instead of being correctly refinished. Lockwood spent about 150 hours restoring the crucifix.
“I want to bring people closer to talking to Him,” she said. “Bringing some kind of order and beauty into the world is good with all the disorder we bring into it. I always love to watch people come in and touch (the statues).”
Lockwood has continued to refinish statues and crucifixes that are placed throughout the church and school.
“Her artwork, which is twofold — the windows and the restoration of the statuary — that’s what makes the sanctuary look sacred,” Father Pollard said. “If people come in and find it a warm and comfortable place to worship, much of it is a credit to her work.”
While volunteering to do all this work for the church, St. Veronica School came to need an art teacher and they asked Lockwood if she would be willing.
“The first day I was like ‘oh no, I don’t think so,’ but after that I got very excited getting kids to paint,” she said.
Lockwood had been a stay-at-home mom since her twins, now fifth-graders, were born. But she had done a lot of volunteering with Scouts and the Little Flowers Girls Club and other organizations. “I was always the ‘craft mom,’” she said.
“I just want them to love (art),” she said. “I think it’s so important that they value what they have in themselves. I want to stress how different we all see things and allow them to work within whatever level they’re at.”