Painter brings Winchendon statues back to life with color

By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

WINCHENDON – Catholics who care about statues gathered after Mass recently at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish.
The occasion was a “meet and greet” to thank the untrained but faith-filled artist who rekindled parishioners’ memories, generated excitement and enlivened hope.
That artist, Michelle Scheurer, had restored for the parish a Madonna and Child statue unearthed from a rectory closet. Parishioner Ann Chlebecek said she’d told Father Henry Ramirez, administrator, that the lower church chapel needed a Marian statue, and informed him about Mrs. Scheurer, who did that job free of charge.
 So impressed were parishion–ers that they offered to pay her to repaint the 10 nearly life-sized saints attached to pedestals high in the church, said Juanita Carrier-Clukay, secretary.
Since many wanted to contribute, the parish held a raffle to win the privilege to pay for the painting of each statue. Parishioners chose saints, and, if their names were drawn, paid $300 for Mrs. Scheurer to paint that statue.
Mrs. Carrier-Clukay said the idea for the “raffle” came from Joyce Carrier, wife of her cousin, Deacon Mark J. Carrier, then serving there.
 “We didn’t have anything extra” to fund this; the raffle worked, said Glenn Hunt, chairman of the parish finance committee.
Father Ramirez said Sandra Dunleavy, a friend from another parish, paid for the paint. Mrs. Scheurer chose the paint, coordinating colors with the walls and windows.
“I always try to do something during Lent,” Mrs. Scheurer said. “You do it … as a kind of sacrifice. … I’m with our Lord,” present in the tabernacle.
She listened to the rosary while on the scaffolding. Hauled water from the basement to clean the statues. And asked the saints she painted to sing the “Salve Regina” with her and to pray for her family and others.
A wife and mother of 10 who homeschools her youngest children, she rejoiced in having “an ability to spend quiet time with the Lord … doing something good for the world.”
Mrs. Scheurer learned about doing this kind of ministry as a child - by watching her mother, Kathleen Towne, a New Hampshire resident, who rescued discarded statues.
“She’d just fix them up, and hand them off to other people,” Mrs. Scheurer said. She said her painting and her mother’s are God’s gifts; neither of them are trained artists.     
Mrs. Scheurer said she has fixed friends’ statues and done larger projects and wants to start a business. She said she restored Stations of the Cross in Annunciation Parish’s Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church in Gardner, where she and her family attend Latin Mass, and at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Northfield, where two of her daughters are students.
Mrs. Scheurer’s work at Immaculate Heart included repainting the statue of Our Lady of Fatima at the church’s entrance, and adding a halo and crown, like the statue originally had, Mrs. Carrier-Clukay said. She said the family of Arline Tenney, an active parishioner who died last fall, paid for that work in her memory.
Joseph Bulger Jr., former sexton, said he had rescued the Fatima statue at his mother’s request in the 1970s when “they were tearing everything down” in the church. His mother spotted the statue in the dump truck he was to drive to the landfill and kept the statue at home. He said he brought it back after she died about five years ago, when the pastor was seeking a Fatima statue.
At that time it was repainted, but not well, so Mrs. Scheurer repainted it, Mrs. Carrier-Clukay said.
That statue wasn’t the only victim of changes at Immaculate Heart, said Mrs. Carrier-Clukay. She said that in 1978, at age 17, she was the youngest parish council member. She and her peers did not want the church stripped, because it was “a work of art” and part of the parish’s history. She said she talked to the pastor, but felt “dismissed” by him, and when she returned from college on break, the church looked different.
For one thing, the bright-colored Stations of the Cross and statues near the ceiling had been repainted beige, blending with newly painted walls.
“It was devastating!” Mrs. Carrier-Clukay said, adding that several angry parishioners left for other parishes, and only a handful seemed fine with the changes.
Father Roland L. Gamache, pastor from the mid-1980s until his death in 2006, slowly brought back remnants of the past, but the parish couldn’t afford to have the statues or stations repainted, she said.
She said one of her dreams was “to see the statues restored to some color.”
Daily communicant Doreen Page, who remembers the colored statues, echoed that sentiment.
“We’ve been waiting for this for years,” she said. “We live across the street.” Seeing the church lights on when Mrs. Scheurer worked at night, “we’d get all excited.”
She said she didn’t “win” the raffle, but can donate for repainting of the Stations of the Cross, if Mrs. Scheurer takes on that project.
The repainting of the statues, Mrs. Carrier-Clukay said, “has brought so many people back just to get a look at them.” As the work progressed, people stopped after Mass, talked and took pictures.
“I hope we can build on that,” she said. She said Mrs. Scheurer “brought some life back to us,” and added, “People need hope again; it has not been an easy (few) years since COVID.”
The paint job brings back beautiful memories and pays homage to the parish’s history, she said. The statues are not colored exactly as they were before, but she said they are more beautiful because the faces are life-like.
Father Ramirez said former parishioners now living in other states responded positively to before-and-after photos he posted on Facebook.
“It just brought life to this church,” said Debra Sesia, a member of the parish for about six years. “You come in now and you say, ‘Wow!’”
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