St. Bonaventure University - Robert Lax Sculpture

I may not have found Lax's grave, but tucked in a corner of the Quick Center for the Arts I found a most amusing sculpture of Robert Lax.

Edith Feuerstein Schrot (American, born 1943)

Robert Lax

Silicon bronze

Purchased by the Friedsam Library, 1998

I am intrigued with the changing way it looks from different viewing places ...

St. Bonaventure University - The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts

What I did find open on the St. Bonaventure campus was The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.  Well, at least the door was open, no one was there but me.

What a treat!  Again, the art felt very Franciscan to me.  I love this rendition of Francis:

and another painting along the same lines ...

There were mosaics ...

and fun stuff ...

Upstairs I found a photo exhibit of the Allegheny River, which starts as a trickle in northwestern PA and then flows into New York State for a bit before heading down to Pittsburgh and joining the Monongahela to form the Ohio River.

This was on an outside wall of the Center for the Arts.

St. Bonaventure University - St. Theresa Shrine

Wandering around the St. Bonaventure campus, I happened upon the Shrine to St. Theresa of the Divine Child of Jesus, the Little Flower.

I'm pretty sure this is the shrine before which Thomas Merton was praying when he received the message that he was to join the Trappists.

Merton is popular on this campus ...

St. Bonaventure University - St. Joseph's Oratory

In the center of the St. Bonaventure campus - or what looks like the center to me - is the St. Joseph Oratory.  It is such a sweet little place that invites you in to sit for awhile. 

St. Bonaventure University - the library

So I went over to the St. Bonaventure campus.  It is summer (and a Saturday), and the only people I noticed looked like a girls' basketball camp (they were all so tall!).  The architecture feels Italian and Franciscan here.  I got a good look at the library, even though it was closed. 

I've been looking for non-cherubic angels, and there was one watching the entrance to the library.

[Photos from my visit to St. Bonaventure last summer are here.]

St. Bonaventure Cemetery

I must have been crazy to think that I could go to the St. Bonaventure cemetery and find Lax's grave without any directions.  What was I thinking?  And on a Saturday in the middle of the summer when I could find no one who even knew who Lax was.  I don't expect that Lax would have a big, flashy stone, being who and how he was.

Anyway, Olean is not far from Wellsville, and I pass the exit for St. Bonaventure every time I go to Wellsville.  Next time I will remember to get directions.  It is a lovely cemetery, on a hill overlooking St. Bonaventure University.  The motherhouse of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegheny is also here - my sister worked as an administrator of the nursing home for awhile.

St. Bonaventure's is really in the village of Allegany, which is to the west of Olean.  This is how it looked on Saturday morning as I drove through the town.  Still foggy.