M.L. Snowden is the designer and sculptor of the gilded bronze Altar Angels that wrap and float around the base of the marble altar in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. She also designed the twelve-foot, half ton silver Los Angeles Angel Frieze in the Cathedral's Visitor's Conference Center.

Sculpture for Snowden is "love." She works alone in her studio without assistants or models. "Sculpture is something that flows through me and expresses my emotions, my love, my feeling, my touch." She feels "the angels were something that went beyond words. They rest in a place of truth for me."

Snowden came from a loving home and was taught by Jesuits at Loyola-Marymount in Los Angeles, where she graduated in 1974. "I am not the product of an art school, but of a life immersed in art," she says.

The sculptor developed her relationship with clay at her father's side and worked with him for thirty years. George Snowden was the sculptor of the Carrara marble, main altar and the heroic sized saints on the exterior of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Grief over his death in 1990 kept her from sculpting for ten years, returning to it only when she was able to be alone, emotionally in her studio.

Along with artistic talent and technical tradition, Snowden also inherited from her father thirty-eight of 19th Century master sculptor Auguste Rodin's sculpting tools. Her father received them from his mentor, Robert Eberhard, who was a protégé of Rodin. Some of Rodin's tools were used by Snowden in the final sculpting phases of the altar angels and on the silver frieze.

"Rodin's tools for me are a living connection to people who have devoted their lives to sculpture," says Snowden. In 1992, she was selected from professional sculptors from thirty-two countries as the winner of the prestigious sculpture prize, The International Rodin Competition in Tokyo, Japan. Her winning sculpture was Cataclasis, which represents the three states of energy - latent, emerging and active - that determine the Earth's physical structure. The piece is now in the permanent collection at Japan's Hakone Open-Air Museum, the largest sculpture museum in the world.

Snowden's sculptures speak to the profound forces of nature. Characteristically, the human figure interacting with the earth's elements is the focal point. The dynamic Seismic Ray unveiled in 1999 in San Francisco's Union Square depicts the force along a geological fault line which results in a wave of energy transmission. Tectonics personifies the forces of nature that led to the formation of the Earth. Genesis depicts the creation of a mountain through sheer force. In Verdura a woman is seen surging forth from water, attesting to the dynamic notion of life.

Learn more about the ALTAR ANGELS.