Notre Dame's Bell Maker

Nearly lost to history, the traditional craft of bellmaking in the United States is being reborn in the basement of Notre Dame’s Riley Hall. Benjamin Sunderlin, an MFA student in sculpture, holds the distinction of being the only American practitioner of an art that first emerged in the Middle Ages and is kept alive only at a few overseas foundries today. Bells mark time, Sunderlin says, “but they’re also made in a certain time, and they represent the ideals and considerations of that culture.”