Newsletter August 2024

Newsletter August 2024: MAKE A MESS

Topics:
1.Make a Right Mess
2. OAJ Article
3. Photos from 4 Workshops
4. In-Person Workshops 2025
5. Online Courses
6. 3 Images
7. Question
8. New Series of Youtube meetings (in Russian)

A MESS

Dear Friends,
I suggest you try a new thing. Next time before you paint the way you used to, would you mind making a little mess?
Well, what I mean is a mess, which gives a hint of a future image. We all are taught to construct, but what if first we let our hands and eyes create the future making a mess, …. The whole figure… Face… or garment… or any other part?

Allow your image to grow from inside of an indefinite shape. Allow your eyes to guide your hand and to stop when image shape gets meaningful. I saw this method used by many artists, both contemporary and those who lived in the past. If you try it, you will see that this method will make your images more expressive as each form will be more alive and more appealing…

I am hoping very much that you will really try to make a mess, and let it evolve into an image.. Just try it once and see how you like it ;)

OAJ ARTICLE

Our last Newsletter was published in April, and soon after this I wrote an article for Orthodox Arts Journal, summarising our teaching experience: https://orthodoxartsjournal.org/teaching-iconography.... I spoke about my experience as my dad's assistant and here you see a photograph of one of my dad's classes and me holding his icon (second on the right) taken sometime between years 1994 and 2000. Writing this article I also invited my fellow iconographers teaching our vocation to share their views, hoping that sharing the knowledge can bring more fruit to everyone. From my side I spoke about the principles we follow now and how we arrived where we are now, - I think this is the most interesting chapter... And don't miss the Comments section, as the discussion continues there :)

PHOTOS

In May and July we taught two Iconography workshops in the US, and two in Italy. We are deeply grateful to our students, who sign up for our courses and we are even more grateful to see that they apply our knowledge in their own projects.

We are still in Italy, and I am writing this right after we finished teaching two in-person workshops here. Many of our students here were current iconography school teachers and the whole climate in the classrooms was different. We dedicated both programs to drawing and painting practices and exercises and it was so satisfying to see our students fully immersed in the practice without worrying about the time, necessary toi "complete" an image. From our side, sharing the method and the technique we just continued to teach the criteria so that our students would have instruments to assess their images on their own.

Scuola Iconografica di Seriate at Villa Ambiveri was very welcoming, and one more time they invited us to use their facilities to teach our own courses.
What made us love this place was the fact that all the workshop participants are invited to live, study and eat together as a little community in a XVII century villa on the edge of the city of Bergamo. This gives a good possibility to focus on iconography without being distracted. The villa is beautiful, food is delicious, everyday morning and evening prayers plus a Byzantine rite catholic mass at noon make the workshop experience into a unique spiritual journey. The only negative fact is that air conditioning is only installed in the Classroom, so we should think of a cooler time of the year to avoid suffering from summer heat. Also please take into account that sometime before, after, or during the course we could visit the earliest romanesque churches of the region - Civate and/or Castelseprio and maybe some other ones too.

Villa Ambiveri is just 3 miles from Bergamo Airport (BGY), it is reachable by taxi in 10 minutes. All this together made me wonder, what if some foreign students might wish to come to study iconography in Italy? Please let us know if you will ever consider this possibility, - then we will be happy to hear about your preferable time of the year to begin thinking in this direction.

IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS FOR 2025:

Today we launch 4 off-line workshops:
2 in Melbourne (Australia) and
2 in the New Skete (NY, USA) with similar programs.

If you just begin your journey in iconography or you just want to stop tracing your icons, we recommend taking our Workshop for Beginners. We will study and paint a XII century icon of Christ from Svaneti (Georgia).

To attend this workshop in Melbourne Australia (January 13-17, 2025 please see this page).

To join us in the New Skete in the USA (April 29 - May 03, 2025), see this page.

For advanced iconographers we suggest a deep and thorough study of two medieval icons of Christ to get introduced to the variety of methods of face painting. We will carefully study all the aspects of the last stage of work on an icon. Seemingly a moment of triumph, it's actually a time, when we realise that we have done all what was planned, but to really complete the work, to turn a summary of details into a serious work we need to delicately touch some parts to calm them down and other ones (like face) to give them more emphasis. It's a special type of work - bringing all the details together, and I am glad we will do it this time. Please, come if you experience difficulty finishing your icon, - I believe that we will be able to help you with these problems.

To attend this workshop in Melbourne Australia (January 20-24, 2025 please see this page).

To join us in the New Skete in the USA (May 13 - 17, 2025), see this page.

ONLINE COURSES

All our Online Courses proceed as they should and I have almost finished reviewing my course on Theology of the icon. As now I have an opportunity to ask, I will ask you, - especially those of you who plan to sign up for this course: - will you prefer to have access to all pre-recorded lectures right away, or would you agree that our old Zoom format with possibility to ask questions is still the best option? Please, let me know what you think.
Yet we have not established the daytes for our Online courses for 2025, but we shall do it very soon, - as soon as we return to Tbilisi. I will send a special Newsletter to share this information, - stay tuned!

3 IMAGES

As a matter of fact, even if our routine does not allow us to work as artists, we can still do it when we can. And the very process of seeing how colors lay down on various surfaces, how different textures establish a dialogue… It's magic! I mostly like the image of Christ. It seems to me that after a number of attempts I finally succeeded not overloading this image with details…

A QUESTION

After our second course in Seriate was over, we were asked a question, which I was always trying to answer, but never heard asked.. So, here it came at the end, - the Mass Media Manager of the School asked, - why the icons should be the way they are?
I guess it's because we are in Italy, where Rennaissance culture has a particularly strong impact. Maybe we should provide an answer for this question in a more extended way? Maybe it worth a special lecture? I am sure that asking questions is the only way to learn,. so, please, - continue asking them and please, continue searchig for the right answers and share them with us, - we will love to hear from you.

NEW SERIES OF YOUTUBE MEETINGS (in Russian)

It's so thrilling to see turns of history. And even though there are some difficult events, - like the one I participated in February (Conference in Museum of Andrei Rublev in Moscow), - the best way to deal with them is to turn them into a beginning of some positive consequences. This time it was Olga, who analyzed the videos of the conference and said, that even the questions coming from museum workers have shown so many stereotypes... That it worth trying to make a series of our own meetings/conferences, inviting different kinds of professionals to answer the most stereotype questions... One of the typical ones would always start with "Don't you believe that an icon has to....?"
Our purpose is to actually show, that the very questions are wrong, which means that there can be no good answer... Unless we see the subject from a professional point ov view. So far we have published 3 videos and we hope this project will continue. the title is "Icon and Stereotypes". Sorry, it is only available in Russian, but at least for some of you who know this language or for those, who can use subtitles this may be interesting. Have a look if you are interested:

Thank you for your invaluable support of all kinds!

With warmest wishes and gratitude,
Philip and Olga

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