A Good Month's Work

On Friday I completed a month long tutorial with Indianapolis artist and art teacher Julie Perigo in an immersion introduction to iconpainting.  Working side-by-side, we completed three icons: the Holy Face (icon of Christ Made-Without-Hands); Christ the Savior and the Donskaya Mother of God (a variant of the Eleousa or Merciful Mother of God icon).  She was introduced to pretty much every essential aspect of the process, from preparing the wooden panel and the levkas/ true gesso ground; watergilding and gold burnishing; composition and drawing and egg tempera painting.   And the theology of the icon, the spirituality of icon painters and of course, prayer together and individually.

 It was pretty relentless - Monday through Saturday from 8:30am till 5:30pm, bookended with Morning and Evening Prayer.  We took Sunday's completely off and Julie had the opportunity to get out of the studio and see some of what our part of Southeast Alaska has to offer.  She visited the glacier, the Shrine of St. Therese, and had the opportunity to observe humpback whales bubble net feeding.

As I return to my full-time work in ministry at the Diocese of Juneau, I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to work daily in iconography with such a receptive, talented and prayerful student.  

Mary, Mother of Mercy, Pray for Them!

Ravensburger Schultzmantel Madonna

I'm beginning my fourth and final week teaching in the studio (and on retreat) while taking annual leave from my regular job at the Diocese of Juneau.  It is always a welcome opportunity to quiet down, reflect and pray.   I've been particularly praying for  refugees,(who are fleeing either political or sectarian violence and war) and migrants, who are trying to escape poverty, drought, crop failure and famine.

Its hard for me to understand the difference.  On one side of my family, my Alsatian ancestors were refugees, forced out of Alsace after the German defeat of France in 1870.   My Irish immigrant economic migrants, trying to survive the very real threat of starvation during the Great Hunger and hoping for a better life.  Both families made the perilous journey by sea to America and found asylum  (if not, in the case of the Irish, welcome) in the New World.

This past week, more than 20,000 migrants from Africa and Asia were rescued attempting to cross from North Africa to Europe without authorization (legal immigration is closed.  They are desperate and vulnerable and the traffickers who prey on them are unscrupulous and greedy, packing them by the thousands in unseaworthy ships and  rubber rafts.  Over 5,000 drowned in 2016 and 1,985 to date in 2017 when their boats were swamped or capsized.

It is a humanitarian and human tragedy that will only get worse, in a world in which 65.3 million people are refugees.

As I've noted in earlier posts, I pray better with a pencil or a brush in my hand, and as I was praying for those desperate people in peril in the Mediterranean and those rescuing them, the image of Mary the Mother of Mercy came into my mind.  Made popular by the mendicant orders such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans, the Mother of Mercy is depicted extending her cloak over those seeking her protection and prayers.  There are many, many variations.  The Ravensburger Schultzmantel Madonna is a well-known example.
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And thus, this initial drawing for an icon of Mary, Mother of Mercy, Mother of Refugees and Migrants.  

Mary, Mother of Mercy, extend your protective mantle over refugees and migrants everywhere, especially those in peril on the sea!

A Month Away on Retreat (Without Leaving the City Limits)

I'm taking annual leave for four weeks to work in the studio with a student, Julie Perigo, who has come to Juneau for an intensive tutorial on icon painting.  We've already completed almost a week together and she has begun work on the Holy Face ('The Icon of Christ-Made-Without-Hands)

This icon is best starting point to introduce the theology of the icon and the spirituality of the iconographer and a good place to begin painting as well, as the composition is very simple.

She is also getting hands-on experience (no pun intended) in the craft work of making wooden icon panels and preparing the levkas (the gesso ground for the board) as well as water gilding and egg tempera painting.

I'm grateful to have the leave time to devote to working with her and being in the studio.  It is as much a spiritual retreat as work time, as I tend to pray best with a brush (or a piece of sandpaper) in my hand.

Ahead of the Weather:There and Back Again

 

Well, the weather did, in the end, clear up enough to get to Pelican (see aerial view taken this morning on the return flight home).  Grateful to have been able to make a pastoral visit this weekend and glad to be safely home again.  Wondered if I'd be spending a few more days away from home when it began snowing early Sunday morning (see view of the village and Lisianski Inlet yesterday.)

 

Now that I'm home I can resume the drawing for the triptych I've designing for the prayer corner in my studio.  On Friday, just before I started getting ready for the trip out to Pelican, I pinned up the cartoon in the corner to see how it looked.  

 

Natural Icons

Today is the last day of summer -- fall officially begins tomorrow with the equinox, but summer ended last week in Douglas when it began to rain (so far, without letup). My studio has a metal roof so that the drimbeat of rain is a constant rhythm when I am out there.
I am grateful for that reminder of the natural world when I pray and work there (grateful as I am to be in a dry and warm studio!). For the same reason I keep objects like rocks and shells and fossils in my little prayer corner, alongside the icons and prayerbooks. I like to keep before me a visible reminder of the infinitely varied, intricate and ancient order of creation ( a kind of natural icon) A densely black piece of shale picked up on the rocky beach, which may be 300 million years old helps me to remember and appreciate the immensity of geological time, measured in millions of years and my own, our own brief time in life, measured in decades, days and minutes.

God is beyond and behind time, yet i marvel that God invites me, invites us, to participate in his own eternal life (which is beyond comprehension) except with a loving, grateful heart, which, he generously provides and offers us.

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Ora et Labora (continued)

Today and yesterday were all about gilding and prayer. Yesterday I applied gold leaf to the haloes of the icon of the Mother of God and Jesus which I am working on.

The red bole on the halo is a mixture of clay and glue. First, I breathe on the bole. The warmth and moisture of my breath makes the bole become sticky for just a few moments (perhaps 10-15 seconds).


Then I quickly press the gold leaf onto the bole and gently rub on the back of the paper that the gold is attached to.

It's a time consuming process, because in order to be able to burnish (or polish) the gold leaf, I have to gild the halo not once but twice.

It took me most of yesterday to gild the haloes and then to begin burnishing them.

Burnishing the gold also takes time - there is no rushing the process. If everything goes right, burnishing is simplicity itself. Using an agate burnisher (a completely smooth agate set in a wooden handle), you rub the gilded surface with the agate until it begins to shine. Piece of cake! Unless something goes wrong. Which always seems to happen. There may be tiny holes in the gilding or the burnisher lifts up some of the gold or there is one spot that just doesn't want to shine, no matter how much you burnish it. Which usually means making corrections (faulting) to the gilding. but in the end it is worth it.

These last few days have also been a time of prayer. I'm grateful that my studio is also my oratory.

My urgent prayer of supplication has been for Egyptian Muslims and Christians in the aftermath of the coup that toppled the government of Muhammed Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected President of the country a year ago. This has led to demonstrations against the new government by Morsi supporters, demonstrations that that army and security forces have fired upon, killing hundreds of protesters in at least four separate incidents that can only be charactorized as massacres.

In addition to violence between pro and anti-Morsi rioters in various Egyptian cities and towns, extremist elements in the Muslim community appear to be scape-goating the Christian minority around the country and mobs have looted and burned over 60 churches and church related buildings in the past week.

Praying evening prayer tonight was for the feast of St.Bernard of Clairvaux, the great eleventh century reformer and Doctor of the Church (called the Doctor mellifluus, the Honey-sweet Doctor for his love of the word of God and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary) yet preached the catastrophic Second Crusade.
The reading, from the Letter of St. James, gives me much to ponder.
"Wisdom from above is first of all innocent. It is also peaceable, lenient, docile, rich in sympathy and the kindly deeds that are its fruits, impartial and sincere. The harvest of justice is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace."
May it be so, in our hearts and in the hearts of our brothers and sisters in Egypt.

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