Nate Pfenenger has made his share of “out of the box” art projects, but this may be his most complicated one yet. Nate turned 20,400 black dice into an intricate, larger-than-life-size mosaic portrait of Venerable Father Augustus Tolton.
“I didn’t think it was going to be a big thing,” said Nate, a senior at Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School in Columbia. “I just thought it would be a really fun and memorable art project.”
Nate’s art teacher, Lonnie Tapia, suggested he use dice to capture Fr. Tolton, a Missouri native born into an enslaved family, who grew up to become the first recognizably Black, Roman Catholic priest in the United States and is well along the path of being formally declared a saint.
Nate encountered many challenges during the 200-hour project. “You do still learn something from failure,” he noted. “In life, too, it doesn’t mean you should give up if you fail at something. You use it as a stepping stone to future success.”
Click here to read more and see pictures of the mosaic from the Catholic Missourian.