Mary's Garden (color, continued)

More progress in laying in color on the icon for Mary's Garden at our house. The first step in actually painting the icon is to apply transparent layers of color to the entire icon to build up the deepest values. Then the garments, faces, hands and feet of the figures of Jesus and Mary are highlighted.

The highlighting either using color mixed with white or yellow ochre or gold leaf, signifies the transfiguring light of grace most perfectly and completely revealed in Christ. This grace, represented as light, fills not only Mary, the saints and those who are baptized into the saving death and life-giving resurrection of Jesus, but the creation and the entire cosmos.

If you look carefully at the icon you may be able to see the pale blue forget-me-nots that are beginning to take shape behind the throne of Mary. Its a joy to see how the flowers in Mary's Garden are beginning to emerge too (the violet-blue hyacinths are starting to open up in front of the daffodils).

From B Street to the Vatican

It's hard to believe that a couple years ago I was in my little studio in Douglas  working hard to complete the illustrations for this book.    Even harder to believe is this photo of my Bishop, Edward Burns, presenting Pope Benedict with a copy of the Illuminated Easter Proclamation during his Ad Limina visit in April.Here he is showing the Holy Father the title page with the message I'd written to him.  The Exsultet was signed by our three Alaskan bishops and all of the priests of their dioceses as an expression of the prayers and affection of all of  Catholic clergy, religious and faithful of our state. 

Bishop Burns brought me back three official photos of the presentation of the book.  I was glad to see that in one of them Bishop Burns pointed out to the Pope the borders in the margins with plants from Southeast Alaska: blueberries, salmonberries, forget-me-nots and devil's club.  

What a humbling and gratifying moment this is.  Thank you Bishop Burns, Liturgical Press and all the good friends who made this book a reality!  I do hope that Pope Benedict had a chance to take another look at the book when he had a few moments to himself.  And I hope he liked the bees. 

Mary's Garden (continued)

I began to 'open up'* the icon for the garden shrine yesterday afternoon. So far, so good.

*To 'open up' an icon is the application of colors (and any gold leafing) to the icon panel.  I don't know the origin of the expression (probably from the Greek or Russian) but I love the implication that it is at this point in the work that the beauty of the icon begins to reveal itself as the colors and the gold leaf are applied by the iconpainter.  In the same fashion that a flower as it begins to emerge from the bud 'opens up' and blooms in all of its beauty. 

Mary's Garden (Updated)

I was fortunate today to have the time to brush in the tracelines of the icon of Mary and Jesus for Mary''s Garden at our house. Imagine this icon in this location, but encased in a sturdy cedar shrine, with a pitched, shingled roof and attached to the fence with lag bolts and hurricane ties. (Necessary to resist the fierce winter winds that Doulas is famous for!)

It 's always a joy to put on my battered Carmelite apron - always a reminder to remember my friends at St.Joseph's monastery in Terre Haute, Indiana in prayer-- and paint. I 'm grateful to my wife Paula for giving me the time today to be in the studio by taking a long shift at the cooperative gallery where our work is on display. Thank you, sweetheart!

Mary's Garden

Last fall my daughter Phoebe and I constructed the garden box in the upper corner of our yard. With the help of her friend Sarah we filled it up with soil, planted it with bulbs and waited for spring. well, it's spring and the flowers are starting to come up and bloom. The plan for the month of May is to finish the icon of Mary and Jesus (which will go into a yet-to-be-built shrine in the upper corner of the garden). 

I've got the drawing on the panel -- now all I have to do is paint it, build the shrine, install the icon in the shrine and set it up in the garden. 

True God from True God

Christ the Teacher
(Icon by Leonid Ouspensky)

The memorial today of St. Athanasius, the fourth century Patriarch of Alexandria and tireless defender of Nicean orthodoxy is an occasion for both great jubliation and a bit of trepidation.  Jubilation because Athanasius, against great opposition and enduring persecution upheld the true and complete divinity of Jesus vis a vie the Father over and against the supporters of the priest Arius who maintained that Jesus, was a creature, that is, was created by God at some point in time.  Semi-divine but not of the same divine being as the Father. 

The bishops of the first Ecumenical Council at Nicea (Athanasius was a deacon accompanying his bishop at Nicea) inserted language into the baptismal creed to make explicit the orthodox faith of the Church. 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, one in being (consubstantial in the creed we pray each week at Mass) with the Father, through whom all things were made.'

The dominant Greek culture of the time believed that the invisible, spiritual world was superior to the visible material one.  The farther one got from the material the closer, they thought, to God (who was pure spirit).  Believing that the material and corporeal were an impediment to salvation, they had a very difficult time embracing mystery of the Incarnation and salvation in Christ.   That the Logos, who is pure spirit, would completely assume our human nature was contrary to their deepest convictions of what was good and holy and true.

The trepidation comes with the knowledge that the revelation of God in Christ inevitably clashes with the cultural norms and received wisdom of every culture, including (even especially) our own.  What the Church believes about Jesus at times contradicts certain aspects of modern culture, which deny revealed truth and  the possibility of a personal God but uphold as absolute values individual autonomy and self-determination, personal freedom, religious skepticism and radical, reductive equality.  

Our age-old temptation as Christians is to be conformed, not to Jesus Christ and to the gospel, but to the world and to the spirit of the age.  St. Athanasius, despite denunciation, persecution and exile, remained steadfastly orthodox.  May we follow his example in our own time.

St.Athanasius, pray for us! 
 

St. Joseph the Worker, pray for us!

Icon of the Holy Family
(St. Paul's Catholic Church, Juneau)

About fifteen years ago I worked with a group of boys and girls on a fresco at their middle school in Juneau.  For two weeks the students and I (along with my collaborator Kathy Sievers, an iconographer from Portland, Oregon) worked together.  It was a true fresco, that is, we painted on wet plater applied to the wall.  The students worked hard: they dryed and cleaned sand, mixed troughs of lime plaster and applied in layers to the wall and ground and mixed colors and applied paint to the fresh plaster.  It was a wonderful project and together we created a beautiful mural.  We invited parents to come by and visit while we were working and observe the progress we made each day.  We attracted a lot of fathers who worked in the building trades.  They came in their work clothes and boots to watch their sons and daughters do in a school setting the kinds of tasks they did every day.  One father, who hung drywall for a living, picked up a float and patiently showed the students (and his son) how to get the final painting coat perfectly smooth on the section we were preparing to paint that day.  He stepped back to watch the students work and said to me that this week working on the fresco had been the first time he thought his son really understood and appreciated the work he did every day. 

It's no secret that the feast of St. Joseph the Worker was originally proposed by the Church in the middle  years of the 20th century as an alternative to MayDay out of concern that Catholic workers in Europe were joining militant socialist (and later, communist) trade unions.  Yet, this feast has also helped to underscore the dignity of work and of working people in an economic system that too often brazenly exploits manual workers and seeks everyway possible to cut costs (and boost profits) by outsourcing, automating or eliminating their jobs.   Catholic social teaching proposes that every form of work has dignity, not only because work is necessary to human survival and flourishing but because work is one of the key ways we participate in society and is an intrinsic part of what it means to be fully human.