Every day at Mercy McAuley High School, students bring their creativity to life under the guidance of art teacher Natalie Fischer. From photography to sculpture to digital art, Fischer not only teaches her students artistic skills, she also weaves Catholic faith elements into their learning experience.

Fischer, herself a graduate of the former Mercy High School, teaches every art discipline at Mercy McAuley and is on the school’s Spiritual Life Committee. She works to help students develop their skills, but also further expose them to Catholicism.

The Spiritual Life Committee works to involve the entire student body in faith-related pursuits. For Catholic Schools Week one year, her 3D Art students created small clay sculptures of either St. Catherine McAuley or the Blessed Virgin Mary then hid the figures around campus for others to find and take selfies with; posting the selfies online earned points for prizes.

After researching imagery of St. Catherine or St. Mary the art students learned how to additively sculpt, Fischer said. They also learned “the technique of staining their pieces to kind of emphasize the texture and their fingerprints and things like that.”

In 2023, 3D students did a similar project with relief tiles about specific saints they researched, and design students in 2024 created window clings in Adobe Illustrator.

At Mercy McAuley since its founding in 2018, Fischer enjoys the breadth of art disciplines she is able to share with her students.

“It’s a challenge, but I absolutely love it because every class is something different,” she said. “I teach every class that we offer. … I do love the fact that I get to do so many different things, and we don’t have just Art 1, 2, 3, or 4, which I think is nice. I really can specialize if a student really wants to learn more about ceramics; we have classes that are designated just for that.”

Fischer’s passion for art extends past work hours as well. She takes classes at the Cincinnati Art Museum and continues in her own artistic endeavors, particularly photography. Recently asked to present at the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Evening with Educators event, she shared the same lesson she had taught her students about capturing a moment with photography:

“Our lives are built up of these tiny little moments, and usually the way you feel and the way that that moment feels is more impactful than the tiny little details.”

When she presented that lesson at school, one student noted a particularly modern moment. Mercy McAuley doesn’t allow students to use phones in class, but they can between classes.

One student took pictures of “the chaos in those moments, when she’s the only one that’s looking up, and everybody else is rushing around, staring at their phone in the hallway,” Fischer said. “Those images are really kind of fun to see. … She did it with a slow shutter speed. So, that just has kind of a blur and then the person who is paying attention and looking straight at the camera is fully in focus.”

Fischer also enjoys watching the students grow in confidence from seeing their art displayed in the school and in the local community.

“It’s really fun to see the students get excited about that little recognition. That’s where I think the Catherine and Mary figures being out there—sharing all their work with our whole school community and beyond—it can be really, really powerful. When you make something and you create something, it’s like a part of yourself is going out …. They get to share their talents that way, and they are very talented.

This article appeared in the February 2025 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.