Participants in our recent Iconography Workshop expressed high praise when asked about their experiences in creating an icon under Master Icongrapher Protodeacon Nazari Polataiko. For five days, both novice and prteps needed to compose a traditional egg-tempera, Russo-Byzantine-style icon. By week's end, the group posed for a photograph, looking peacefully content while holding their creations, and summarizing the class with words of awe, wonder, and gratitude:
- Bess Chavkravarty: "medicine for the soul"
- Antonia Daily: "a thousand Thank-Yous for this opportunity"
- Fr. Hal Dudash: "a unique opportunity"
- Rev. T. Michael McDowell: "creative community experience"
- Janet Massad: "passionate restraint"
- Kelly Miller: "glowing success"
- Tanya Penkrat: "grateful for God's grace"
- Kathryn Pritchett: "wonderful experience!"
- Anne Therese: "Supremo!—like falling H20"
- Leigh Wackerman: "window to heaven"
Protodeacon Nazari, who along with his wife establlshed the Ss. Alipi and Andrei Rublev Icon Studio in Ottawa, Canada, has been "writing" iconsfor 15 years. For the past three years he has conducted a summer workshop on our campus. During his workshop, Protodeacon Nazari not only attempts to teach proper iconographic technique to his students but also tries to instill in them the concept that the icon is integral to the Orthodox Christian faith.
"By its roots, the icon goes deep into the Eucharistic experience of the Catholic (that is, 'universal') Church," he notes. "Iconographers have to be an integral part of Christ's Body, the Holy Church. We try to reintroduce the importance of the traditional iconographic process to the wider Christian community, and by this means, to bring the Light of Christ's Truth to this world; so the world is enlightened by the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church through the art of iconography."
View of a photo gallery of the Iconography Workshop.
