Christ is Ascended!

So I haven't been blogging much lately... It would seem to be a fairly consistent pattern with me. The icon above is the reason for my absence. I have been working long hours to get this done in time for Ascension. It is now done, but sadly will have to wait a little while for the installation. This icon took up almost an entire wall of my living room, and required me to use a ladder to paint the parts at the top. At some point I am hoping to finish assembling a video from all the still photos I took along the way. Anyway, I'll keep this short since I still have lots to do before my trip to Idaho next week, but I just wanted to wish all a Happy Feast Day and thought that this icon would be a nice way to do that.

Icon Workshop. Boise Idaho. June 9-13, 2009

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching an icon workshop sponsored by Holy Transfiguration Antiochian Orthodox Church (Fr. Mark Fenn) in Boise Idaho. The class has been approved by and received the blessing of His Grace, Bishop JOSEPH. The class is open to all Orthodox Christians, Catechumens, and serious inquirers. We will be painting an 8" x 12" icon of the Pimen Mother of God:




If you might be interested in attending, please check out the brochure. (PDF format)

Or you can go straight to the registration form. (also PDF)

You can also pay the class fee online using google checkout here.

The class will paint this icon from start to finish, with all of the supplies included, and demonstrations of all of the steps necessary for completion of the icon. In conjunction with the class, we will be supporting the work of this mission parish, and reaching out to the community. Before the class begins, I will be installing two (maybe three) icons in the iconostasis of Holy Transfiguration Church. We will try to get press attention for this so that we can have the opportunity to speak to a larger audience, not just about iconography, but about the Orthodox Church. We will invite the public to attend a lecture at the completion of the class so that they can learn about how this sacred art reflects the theology of the Church. It is my hope that this class will be a blessing to the parish of Holy Transfiguration, and a blessing to the area as it will no doubt be a blessing for me and my fiancee.

If you are interested, please let us know. Or if you know of someone who would be interested, please forward this information, or send them here, or to my website.

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 3: Christ is Risen!

Christ is Risen!
Indeed He is Risen!

It's been a few days since an update. I have been hard at work painting even with Holy Week wrapping up and all of the festivities for Pascha. This is usually a difficult time of year for me. I am very busy with all of the services, especially since I have to chant at all of them. My duties with Parish Council have also added to the amount of work I have to do. And of course this is a busy time for commissions as well. Then this year I had an added bit of fun. On Friday about half an hour before I had to leave for Vespers, I lost my footing and almost sprained my ankle, but instead fell forward and slammed my sternum against the corner of a chair, slammed my arm against the wall, and my knee against the floor. Needless to say I was plenty sore by the time I was done with Church on Sunday afternoon. Now I am finally somewhat rested.

But despite all of that, I was very glad to have spent so much time at the Church celebrating the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. On Saturday I was so moved by the thought that by Pascha of next year I will be married and able to celebrate the Resurrection with my wife. It has been a long time since I have been able to celebrate with someone that I love. My family has all moved away and none of them really go to Church much anymore, and I have felt this loss a lot over the years. There is something very sad about feeling alone when we are created to live in community and love. So I am very thankful that God has given this to me again, even if I have to wait a little bit longer.

Most of the time I was not in Church was spent with paint brush in hand. By Friday afternoon I had the faces finished, and the icon was looking almost done. Today I finished the lettering, all the rest of the trims, borders, and pinstriping, as well as the gold. It is all but finished now.

I still have to come up with something decotative to go at the bottom, and I am contemplating a painted pattern within the halos, but otherwise that icon is done. Tonight I started a drawing for the matching icon of Christ so that I can get started on that. But I had to try to finish the icon of the Theotokos because it is the same icon that we will be painting in the class in June, and we are going to use it for advertisements and brochures.

Now that I see it done, though, I am really starting to get excited about what this will look like when I am all finished with the other icons. I will be installing at least the first two when I go for the class in June. It should be such a big change from the prints that they have now. And everyone that Lisa has shown the pictures to has been thrilled. It makes me so happy to be able to do something nice for this group of people who has welcomed me with open arms and who will be my Church community soon.

A Labor of Love Part 2: Working for the Man

I love my job. I am so thankful that I am able to spend my days painting icons to proclaim the gospel, to teach the faith, and to beautify churches and homes. But sometimes I don't like my job. There is something about doing anything for a living that has a way of taking the joy out of the work. Lately I have been in a bit of a slump when it comes to painting. It is hard to motivate myself to start painting. It is hard to pinpoint why this is the case except that everything I have been painting lately has been a commission. It has been a while since I have painted something just for the joy of painting. It has been a while since I painted a subject of my own choosing based on a prototype I love, just because I feel drawn to it.

I can't express how wonderful it is to be working on this project. And that joy then carries over to my other work. Since I started working on this icon, I haven't gotten less done on my commissions, I have gotten more done. Work goes so much more quickly, so much more effortlessly when it is done joyfully. I wish I could say that each and every icon is a joy because it is the image and likeness of God in His servants that I am depicting. But sadly, I lose sight of that far to often. The daily becomes mundane, and we quickly forget. And this is the state of my spiritual life as a whole. Just when I learn a lesson, just at the point that I think I have my life on track, I depart from God with my mind, and with my heart. And it takes me some time to realize that I have strayed. And once I do realize this, it is hard to even remember which direction to move to get back. But all it really takes is to find a little time to focus on God, to rekindle that joy. As St. James says, "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you."

This project is my way of drawing near to God in some small way. And with every little step, I know that God is running to greet me.

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.

My Life Lately

Once again, it has been a long time since I have posted anything. The truth is that while there is a lot I want to say, I have held back because most of it is about my personal life.

In late November of this past year, I received a message from an Orthodox woman named Lisa through a social networking site called Orthodox Circle. She wrote to tell me that she really likes my icons, and that we have some common tastes in music, movies, and books. She went on to tell me a little bit about herself, and asked a couple questions. Now normally I read messages from people and barely respond if at all. I might just send a little note thanking them, but rarely anything more elaborate than that. But she had taken the time to write quite a bit, and so I responded point by point to what she wrote, more out of a sense of obligation than anything else. She then responded again with more detail, more questions, and so I responded again. This continued for a while, and she would usually say something like "I am really enjoying our correspondence, and I hope it can continue." At first this was slightly frustrating. You see, I don't really like email. And our correspondence seemed more like a laundry list of information rather than a real personal exchange. And the other thing that made it difficult was that I had decided that I was not going to pursue a relationship. At 31 years old, I had concluded that God did not have a relationship in store for me, and I had decided that I would just accept that and stop letting it frustrate me. I decided this the day before the first email I received from Lisa.

As time went on, instant messaging was added to the emails, which was a little more natural, and helped me to see Lisa's personality just a little better. At one point we were talking on the catbox (or chatbox to the uninitiated) at desertcalling.com and she sent me a message telling me that I was a "kick in the pants" and that I should give her a call when she got off of work. Being shy and nervous about sounding like an idiot (I hate talking on the phone) I declined and decided that my time would be better spent working on a project I had to get done. But I continued with the emails and IMs.

In late December, Lisa put her feelings on the chopping block, and told me how much she liked me, and said that if I was interested, she would really like to expand our friendship. For me, this was a difficult decision. While I knew that I liked her, and enjoyed talking to her, I didn't really feel like I knew her well, and I was also wary of long-distance relationships (she only lives about 2000 miles away from me). Ultimately, I told Lisa that I was interested, but that I didn't know enough about her and that I had to proceed with caution. So the next time we were talking on IM, she asked me what I would like to know about her. So I started asking questions. this didn't go on very long before she asked me if I would want to talk about it on the phone rather than typing everything. So I bit the bullet and called.

I was a little worried that I would call and show myself to be an idiot. I was a little worried that she would have an annoying voice. I was worried that we would have nothing to talk about. What I found was that she has a lovely voice, and that she is so easy for me to talk to, and that she has an intoxicating laugh. And so 2 days after Christmas, I found myself starting to fall for this woman who lives almost on the other side of the continent. We spoke again on the phone on New Year's Eve, then a few days later, and we gradually started to talk for longer periods of time, and more often. It got to the point that we now talk on the phone for a couple hours a day.

Lisa had a trip to Pennsylvania planned for sometime after Christmas, and was hoping she could meet me in person during that trip. I was a little worried about meeting her, for much the same reasons that I was worried about talking to her on the phone. I agreed to meet her, but was anxious about it. As it turns out, the trip had to be rescheduled for mid-February. By about mid-January, February started to seem like a really long time to have to wait to see her.

By the end of January, I got tired of mouthing the words "I love you" at the phone after hanging up, and decided to tell Lisa how I felt about her. After a really wonderful phone call with neither of us wanting to hang up, I wrote a long email telling her how much she has meant to my life, and I told her that I didn't want another day to pass without telling her that I love her. The next day she told me how much that meant to her even though she didn't think she would be able to say those words until she met me in person. I felt a little saddened by that, but when she told me the next day that she printed out the email and carries it with her, it made me so happy to know that whether she said the words or not, I knew she loved me. It only took a few more days before she was able to say it anyway...

So the weeks leading up to February 13th were some of the longest weeks I have ever had. She only had 3 full days in Pennsylvania, but we tried to make the most of them. We were both so happy to meet in person, and were pleasantly surprised that the connection we had on the phone transferred just fine to our connection in person. On February 14th, being Valentine's Day, I had a present for Lisa. I painted her an icon of her patron saint, St. Elizabeth the New Martyr, and wrote a very long inscription on the back. She cried when I gave it to her, and then held it in her arms for most of that day. She gave me one of her favorite prayer ropes which I now take with me whereever I go. We had so much fun together that she almost missed her flight back home because we just didn't want to say good bye.

So then we waited. We continued talking on the phone daily (thank you Verizon for free calls between Verizon phones), and we continued emailing. On March 18th, I flew out to visit her for her Birthday which was on the 20th. I spent the first two days of my visit cooking food for her Birthday party to which she had invited her friends and family. It was a wonderful night for her, and for me as well. I was able to meet her dad, her aunt and uncle, her best friends, and most of the people at her church.

On Monday evening, I took Lisa to one of the nicest restaurants in town, where we had a delicious dinner. We then took a walk along the river next to the restaurant. I told her how much her love has meant to my life, how she was able to reach past all of the obstacles and barriers I had built up around my heart, and to help me to find love when I thought I never could. I then asked her to be my wife, and gave her the ring that I had bought that morning. Before I could finish asking she said yes.

I have never been happier in my life than I have been the past few months. She is sweeter to me than anyone I have ever known, and I feel so blessed to have her in my life. I know that God worked wonders to bring her into my life, and I am thankful for every moment with her. There are still many things to be worked out, not the least of which is the fact that we live in different states, but we are working toward a future life together, and we are both grateful to have found each other. Please pray for us as we work out the details necessary to make this possible.