Labor of Love Completed

It's been a very long time since I posted anything substantive here, but I wanted to post this picture of the iconostasis at our Church, finally completed. Our wedding was nearly 8 months ago now, and I just recently added the icons to the Deacon's doors and added a few finishing touches to the Royal doors and St. John. In total, it took me about a year's worth of time, having to space things out with commission work.

I've been reflecting a bit lately on what it means to me to have this project completed. It was so important to me during the time that I was living in PA for Lisa to be able to have something in Church to remind her of me. At the time of the wedding, it was important to me to have them as a statement of how much I love my wife. Now that we are married, and that we are in Church together regularly, it is important to me as a reminder of how God worked to bring us together.

It seems to me that this is precisely why icons are important. One could easily assume that icons are a way of making the invisible visible. But this is not accurate. Icons are allowable, and in fact necessary, precisely because they make the visible visible. In a sense, they operate in much the same way as a microscope or a telescope does. One would be wrong to suggest that a very small cell or a very distant planet was invisible. They are fully visible, they are every bit as real as the things that we see with the naked unassisted eye, but they cannot be perceived without assistance. Icons help us to see what is visible, but not always perceived.

As a gift to my wife, these icons made lots of things visible. My love for my wife, the fact that I missed her when I was away, and the fact that God helped to bring us together across great distances. But my hope is that as a gift to the Church, they show us that God loves us all, that He loves us so much that He took on human flesh for our salvation, that He took that human flesh and ascended to sit at the right hand of God the Father, and that He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and sanctify us just as He has sanctified the Saints and the faithful before us. Our God and His work among us is visible, and is there to be seen with eyes of faith. I pray that these icons will help those looking with naked eyes to get a glimpse into the eternal that they may grow in faith and develop spiritual sight.Here are closer looks at each of the icons in the iconostasis.

Christ the Light-Giver:

Pimen Mother of God

Royal Doors

Transfiguration of the Lord (Patron of the Temple)

St. John the Forerunner

Archangel Gabriel

Archangel Michael

A Labor of Love IV: The Paintening

So I finished the icon of Christ for Holy Transfiguration Church in Boise. I took a lot of pictures along the way, and I thought that rather than posting a bunch of pictures, I would make a little video. It's a little jumpier than I would have liked, and in the future I need to take a lot more pictures along the way to make it really smooth, but I thought it might be neat anyway. Perhaps at some point I will set it to music or something. I just didn't want to wait much longer or I knew I would never end up posting it... And below is a slightly more detailed look at the finished product.

A Labor of Love, Part 1

I have come to the realization that I am not the most prolific blogger. For someone with as much time as I have to sit around and think, it should be much easier for me to spend a few moments of the day writing down something that I spent hours thinking about. But the truth is that most of the time I prefer to think my thoughts and then let them go rather than saving them for posterity. After all, some of my thoughts are best left forgotten. But it seems to me a shame to have this blog and not really use it.

So this will hopefully be the beginning of a series of posts which should go on over the next few weeks and months. Lisa attends Holy Transfiguration Antiochian Orthodox Church, a small mission parish in Boise, Idaho, and while she would very much like to be married in that Church because of her close friendships with everyone there, when she visited me in Pennsylvania she remarked that she would rather get married in my church because it is so much more beautiful with all of the icons that we have. I told her that I had a solution to her dilemma which was that I could make her Church more beautiful.

In all the years that I have been working as an iconographer, I have done a lot of work in Churches, but it seems like every commission has to match the other icons in the church. I have yet to paint an entire iconostasis because I keep getting work at established parishes. I am certainly not complaining about the work that I have been given, but part of me wants to do something from start to finish. So I have an opportunity to fulfill a little bit of a dream for myself, give a wedding gift to my future bride, and give a small Mission something that they could never afford (and I get a tax deduction out of it to boot...)

So a few nights ago I began the first icon for the iconostasis. It is an icon of the Pimen Mother of God, and in the next few days I hope to draw up the icon of Christ to match it. I have decided to document the work, and use it as fuel for my blog. The added benefit of that is that the people of the Church can check in and see what is happening. In addition, there are plans underway for me to teach a class on iconography (more details in the next couple weeks hopefully) from June 9-13 in Boise, and we will be painting the same icon in the class, so this will give me images to use in advertising for the class, and hopefully I can use this blog to get better coverage and fill up that class since part of the profits from the class will be used to support this parish that will be my spiritual home in a few months time.