St. Thomas’ Art History department called on two artists to commission a piece of memorial art for students who have died during their time at the university that is hoped to go up by the end of September 2021.

This project has been underway since early December and is completely funded by the Undergraduate Student Government. Artists have entered this competition and have submitted plans to become one of the possible two finalists.

“Hopefully, it’s all done by next middle of September, early October…there’s a lot of things going on in the world that can change that,” art history department chair and modern architectural history professor Victoria Young said.

The art call is being organized by a committee made up of student life, student government and the art history department.

“Our artists have been really hard hit during COVID and a lot of them don’t have steady gigs, or just a gig, so this is important that St Thomas can play a role,” Young said.

Medical doctor and fourth year law student at St. Thomas Kristin Johnson is a part of this committee. She lost her husband Jonathan Husted, who died on Jan. 31, 2020 from a heart attack. He was also a law student at St. Thomas in his third year.

“I really think the memorial will help those of us who’ve lost St. Thomas students kind of continue our connection in a physical manner as a touchstone,” Johnson said.

Johnson hopes this memorial can be a reminder to everyone, even students who haven’t lost anyone, to be grateful for the time they have here.

“I think it’s a good reminder for us to finish what we started even though some days it sucks and it’s hard,” Johnson said.

She said working with this committee is great because of the community at St. Thomas and the diverse group of opinions.

“I thought it was going to be hard, talking about my husband’s death and doing something that was memorializing him as well as the other students who passed, but it was really uplifting instead of sad. I really enjoyed that,” Johnson said.

The committee has gone through all the entries, and came up with two finalists, but they cannot reveal the names just yet. The next step is the community coming together to vote on which piece will be the memorial.

“The proposals that they’ve given us are really interesting memorials and they’re completely different from each other, but either one of them could make that space really wonderful,” Young said.

The two finalists have gotten more money to finalize their artwork and the St. Thomas community has the opportunity to choose their favorite one.

“There will be a moment for really true community input from the St. Thomas community,” Young said.

Collaborating with the St. Thomas community is important to make this artwork special for the loved ones of students who have died.

“What do they mean to people from different faiths of different races from different social classes. We’ve been having really great discussions about how this object could be perceived with the ultimate goal of really providing this space where someone can connect with these powerful memories if they’ve had friends they’ve lost.” Young said.

Libby Simpson can be reached at simp8824@stthomas.edu.