Writing icons

In December 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro made the simultaneous surprise announcement that after more than 50 years of U.S. embargo and no formal diplomatic communication, the two countries would begin to normalize their relationship.  The “Cuban Thaw” – as it was referred to in the U.S. press -- was an early Christmas gift to the world.

But long before the “Cuban Thaw” Teresa Harrison of the U.S. was building unusual bridges to Cuba.  Teresa is an icon writer.

Icons are flat-panel paintings with an image of Jesus, Mary, or a saint. The tradition began in the very early Christian church and is a major component of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But it has also caught on in Roman Catholic and Anglican (Episcopal) churches.

Teresa told me that the writing of icons is “a sacred process of illumination. Christ, His mother and saints of the church are written in stylized, formal positions.  The hands and faces of the images are of great significance.  Wars have been fought over the meaning of the position of Christ’s fingers in different icon representations -- not the best moments for iconography! For the iconographer the days of writing an icon are days of quiet contemplation and prayer with the saint -- ideally a transformative, wonderful experience.”

Teresa said that icons are written, not painted, as they are considered an extension of the Word of God.

In 2006, at the invitation of the Episcopal Church of Cuba, Teresa and six of her advanced students traveled from St. John’s Cathedral in Jacksonville, Florida to Havana to teach iconography to a group of priests, seminarians, and trained artists.  Included in that class was the first ordained Anglican female bishop in Latin America, Cuban Suffragan Bishop Nerva Cot Aguilera.

These 21 men and women painted the Stations of the Cross as well as a number of traditional saint and Holy Family icons.  Once consecrated, the icons were presented in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Havana where they remain.  The apprentice iconographers were encouraged to continue writing icons and it is Ms. Harrison’s understanding that iconography in Cuba continues to grow.

Teresa Harrison has brought her expertise to Mexico.  Last week I picked her up at the Mexico City airport.  In Cuernavaca eight U.S. and four Latin American icon apprentices joined her.  She is leading a second annual weeklong retreat at the La Mancha Inn – the first of this year’s eleven workshops she has scheduled.

Participants in the retreat withdraw into sequestration to pursue solitude and contemplation while replicating the image of a saint or holy figure.  Teresa says that iconography is not a creative process; it is one of faithful replication.

The process is intense and formal.  The first step is tracing the image onto a board that has received multiple coats of white marbleized paint and is as smooth as a piece of glass. Color is placed in blocks on the board, filling in robes and background. The most difficult part – flesh -- is also the most important.  Hands and faces are first covered in sankir-green. “It is the color of death and decay,” says icon apprentice Carol Hopkins.  “From that point one must begin to breathe life into one’s image.  Scores of coats of increasingly lighter-colored flesh will cover sankir. When the image begins to breathe you know the saint has come alive before you.”

In Mexico we have what is perhaps the world’s most famous icon – The Guadalupe.  Many in the Cuernavaca’s 2014 icon workshop wrote Guadalupe. This year icon writers have chosen other manifestations of Mary, the Angel Gabriel, Saint Martin of Porres, Saint Monica (mother of Saint Augustine), and Christ.

The setting at La Mancha recalls contemplative life. The daily writing of icons begins with the Eucharist celebrated by the workshop’s chaplain Tamara Newell, herself the first female ordained priest in the Anglican Church of Mexico. She introduces four hours of writing icons in silence.  Noonday prayer -- a responsive liturgy the whole group knows – is followed by meso-soprano Rosemary Alvino singing.  A 40-minute break for lunch leads into a second four-hour session of writing.

Traditionally men have played the larger role in the liturgical church.  All but one of the dedicated iconographers in this retreat is female.  This goes along with the increasing roles of women in the Anglican community, in which Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.— the same year Cuba elected it’s first woman bishop, Suffragan Cot Aguilera.

While adhering to strict traditions developed through seventeen centuries of documented iconography, Teresa Harrison is quietly linking nations, taking down gender barriers, and conserving and ancient art form.  It is wonderful to witness this happening in Cuernavaca.

Writing an icon

This week a wonderful cultural blend is happening in Cuernavaca. A group from Southern California is joining with Episcopalians in Cuernavaca to learn the Russian tradition of icon painting while visiting places with Mexican iconic art.

They are not actually coming here to learn to paint icons, they are coming to learn to write icons. Workshop participant Mike Roeder, an icon collector and scholar himself, explained “the verb ‘to write’ an icon has been adopted by English speakers partly because icons in the Orthodox or Russian tradition depict various aspects of the life of Christ who is also known as The Word. Iconographers are expressing ‘the word’ in their work and thus iconography is a cross between painting and writing.

The Russian language has many words for paint but Russians use the verb to write to mean ‘to paint meaningfully.’   Russians would say that icons are theology expressed in line and color.  Icon, in the original Christian sense, meant a visible image of the invisible – God.”  Creating an icon is a spiritual discipline as well as an artistic effort.

Early Christian icons dating to within 100 years of the life of Jesus have been found in Egypt and Crete.  As Christianity spread iconography also spread east and west, growing particularly strong in the Byzantine Empire. Icons are written to tell a story in an unfolding of dark to light… ignorance to truth.

The workshop is taught by U.S. iconographer Teresa Harrison. Teresa has been painting icons for over 20 years and has a large commission installed in St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. She learned from Philip Zimmerman, a Pennsylvania icon writer in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and from master iconographer Ksenia Pokrovsky, a self-taught Russian iconographer who was instrumental in reviving icon painting after repression during the Soviet era.

I’m delighted to take the group to places to see both ancient Mesoamerican and modern Mexican iconic depictions. I’m especially delighted to hear from workshop organizer Carol Hopkins, my collaborator on Charlie’s Digs, that people were turned away because the workshop was filled—a welcomed change from a couple of years ago when it was harder to attract people to travel to Mexico. I think this bodes well for the resurgence of tourism in Mexico.

Mexico is appropriately rich with icons. In Cuernavaca’s Cortez Palace participants will see and follow Diego Rivera’s iconic story of Mexico from the conquest to the Revolution.  At Xochicalco’s Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent the story will unfold depicting Quetzalcoatl as patron god of a meeting of astronomer-priests gathered to adjust the Mesoamerican calendar.

Mexico’s famed Anthropology Museum also tells a story. I particularly like the way one can wend from room to room following Quetzalcoatl. He’s first portrayed as The Feathered Serpent, then transforms from god to person and then to god-person.  Cuernavaca’s Cathedral, which is housed in a 16th century Franciscan church and monastery, reveals the story leading to the martyrdom of Mexico’s first native-born saint -- San Felipe de Jesus.

The workshop, held at the La Mancha B&B in Cuernavaca, begins each morning with prayer and celebration of the Eucharist. Then following breakfast the group will discuss various facets of icon writing, the history of icons, and the spiritual implications of icon writing.  Participants will “write” their icons mostly in silence or accompanied by Gregorian chanting.

Participants from the U.S. are residents of Southern California.   Those from Mexico are members of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Cuernavaca.  The workshop is also coordinated by The Reverend Tamara Newell, formerly of Christ Church, Mexico City and retired from St. Michaels. Reverend Newell was the first female Episcopalian priest ordained in Latin America.

At the workshop several different icons are being written.  In honor of Mexico’s beloved Guadalupe some have elected to create icons of Our Lady.  Mike Roeder is working on John the Baptist.  Others are focusing on St. Francis, and several who have walked the Camino de Santiago Compostela are writing St. James. Others are reproducing the beautiful, mysterious 6th century icon of The Sinai Christ, housed at St. Catherine’s in Egypt at the base of Mt. Sinai.

Ms. Harrison says “Iconography has spread the Christian faith for centuries; it’s fascinating to be in a culture where a different form of iconography has been used to maintain a cultural history of its people.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to come to Mexico with dear friends and share the experience with residents of Mexico.”

In further conversation with Ms. Harrison I discovered that our paths had previously crossed in of all places Barranquilla, Colombia where we attended the Karl C. Parrish Elementary School at the same time.  My only incursion into oil painting was in Mrs. Rozzano’s fourth grade class.  My painting from that class hangs to this day in my study.  Can Teresa’s love for art be traced back to Mrs. Rozzano?

You are invited to meet the workshop’s iconographers at St. Michael’s and All Angels Church in Cuernavaca, at 10 a.m. Sunday, January 12 when their icons will be presented and blessed.