Corso di iconografia in Italia – Sacred Murals Studio Newsletters

Dear Friends, did you ever wonder, why exactly 24? Why we only have 24 hours in one day/night session?

Icons for iconostasis of church of saint Panthaleone in Saint Petersburg

There are so many things to do and so little time! We often discuss, that the more we live, the more we see ways for applying the creativity, but where to get enough time for everything!

Well, the experience says: serious things take time. And now we both are stack in big projects, eagerly awaiting to finish and share the results with you… And yet there are some more efforts to make, – some more days and hours in the studio…

In addition to being stack in the art, we also have some “digital stress”: – Google keeps saying we need to remodel our website and make it more accessible.

Printing on Fabric. Epitaphios for Orthodox church of Mary Magdalene in NYC

Yes, we agree that it’s very high time, to make it mobile-friendly, and we also want to change the gallery so it allows seeing images in larger sizes. It’s a long process as well, but within some months we do hope to launch the new design, – we will keep you posted!

Well, complaining about the time we absolutely must mention, how deeply we both are grateful for all the help we receive from you! We just constantly feel kindness and friendship, radiating from you and other people around us. With your help we continue making our efforts and researches in our own work and teaching others.

As some of you may have noticed from our Instagram photos, it’s almost a year now that Olga is in the process of creating a liturgical Epitaphios. It’s a traditional liturgical object, usually made of embroidered and often richly adorned cloth.

For a number of years now Olga from time to time helps to design and craft liturgical vestments in our parish embroidery studio. At a certain point, she got inspired to do something on her own, introducing contemporary technologies into this very special world. Instead of golden threads and embroidery, used for centuries, Olga uses pochoir and other techniques to achieve the necessary level of complexity and richness of the image with artistic means. This photograph shows one of the moments of the working process, there is also a slow-motion video, but if you like to see the action, have a look at a time-lapse video, – it squeezes some working hours into one minute.

Manuscript Barb.gr.372 from Library of Vatican

We hope that in August the whole thing will finally come together and will finally reveal everything.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some other news and resources from our friends. First, – Todor Mitrovic gave us a couple of wonderful manuscripts. One was published by the Vatican Library and the other one by the British Library.

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And at the bottom of the page here is some space to get little more grounded. As always we are gladly sharing our friend’s and our own practical information.

First: Our dear friend Margaret Broadbent and her Russian connection Natalia Pecherskaja invite everybody to join their “Pilgrimage of Peace” for August 3-15 August, 2020.

The 13-day program in MOSCOW – TVER – GREAT NOVGOROD – St. PETERSBURG and all the events are organized by the Centre for Science, Religion & Philosophy Programs (SRPh) St. Petersburg, Russia http://www.srph.ru together with the Gippsland Travel, Warragul, Victoria, Australia, www.gippslandtravel.com.au. The Program will be in English.

in this Russian Summer Program – please contact Russian program co-ordinator: Dr. Natalia Pecherskaya: natalia.pecherskaya@gmail.com or Australian co-ordinator Sr. Margaret Broadbent margaret.broadbent@ mercy.org.au , if you are interested.

And at the very end, I wanted to mention, that our workshops in Italy, the USA and Australia for 2019-2020 are filling up. From our side we continue discussing and preparing several new lectures on theology and practical moments, and if you ever thought of signing up for something it might be the time (maybe not?).

We used to make flyers with some brief information and ask our friends to share the printed versions, but we do not know, whether they work or they do not. Maybe yet they do, even though the whole world is digitized, we still trust more to a paper page, instead of a screen? Maybe we should think of both since there are more and more people now relying on internet?

Here it is: to show what our workshops process looks like we put together a little video footage on youtube, hope it gives an idea:

Thank you again for supporting us and for letters with questions, – they always inspire us to study and discover something new.

As one of our Russian iconographers-friends (Andrei Bodko) said, –

Nowadays, with all the light-fast means of spreading the information, we all teach each other, do we want it or not. All together we are a “soup” for each other… We all are a broth or a “bouillon” of knowledge, ideas, thoughts, and other things, enriching each other.

And if we already stay connected, I suggest we pray for a “Worldwide Community of Iconographers”, asking God’s help to be good enough to inspire our neighbors!

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To be continued…

Philip (and Olga)

Dear Friend,
We have some workshop announcements but … I can’t help it!

First I shall praise our colleagues and friends Australian iconographers! It’s an unbelievable coincidence, to have so many events in a row, but they are all the fruit of much long and hard work. CONGRATULATIONS! And here are the reasons for such praise (in the chronological order the news reached us):

A Celebration of Living Light. Exhebition and a Reception

First: an Exhibition and Reception “A Celebration of Living Light” at the Mercy Mission, Spirituality and Action Hub in North Carlton, Victoria. The exhibition was attended by a large number of Sisters and guests. The work of four Australian iconographers: Margaret Broadbent RSM Margaret McHugh RSM, Pauline Pervan RSM and Mrs Alice Vaughan.

We know that it took a very long time to get everything ready, but we are happy to hear that all went well. The photographs and a video are available here.

Icon exhibition Images of the Divine in Canberra. Sue Orchison (in red) who organised things, Richard Charlwood and Apostolic Nuncio, Most Reverend Adolfo Tito Yllana. — **Icon exhibition in Canberra. Sue Orchison Richard Charlwood and Apostolic Nuncio, Most Reverend Adolfo Tito Yllana.**

Second: About 80 people attended the opening, and several hundred guests in total saw The Images of the Divine, an exhibition organized by Sue Orchison displaying the work of 17 iconographers. 70 icons were produced and shown at the administration centre of the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, Australia. Some photographs from the opening are available on Sue’s Facebook Page, and her speech can be seen and read on her website: https://www.thelittlegate.com/

We are very happy and proud of our friends and students’ progress. Olga and I both appreciate and know how hard it is to progress and move forward so successfully!

Eastern Iconography in the contemporary Protestant West

Third: this news is less visual and rather verbal. However, we consider it may have great importance for all of us, especially in the long run.

This morning I received a letter arrived from Peter Blackwood, Australia. He was invited to a conference where he gave a lecture: Eastern Iconography in the Contemporary West. Peter kindly agreed for us to share the text of his speech on our website. It has been added to our text collection and we hope you will gain some important insights and knowledge from it.

Fourth: future workshops

The first ones will be in Italy. Continuing on from last year’s “Corso di Perfezionamento” there will be two courses at the beginning of September. The first one is for those who have professionally worked in iconography for a number of years, and the second one is for other students who have just started on their journey in iconography.

It’s been almost 20 years since I last went to Italy as my father’s workshop interpreter and assistant, and it came around again! Last year I was contacted by some of his students who want to continue their education. I attempted it last year as a special challenge – to figure out the most crucial problems, and share the solutions with the “veterans”, who know almost everything. But what inspires me is that, even though they are so experienced, they are still open and still want to learn!

The US workshops are steadily filling up, and it looks like we are going to have both groups in September. At the New Skete (with the icon of “Angel with Golden Hair” as the chosen image) and at the Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, where we will continue a series of lectures on icon drawing.

At last, but not least, finally … so late, what a shame!! we can announce our January workshops in Melbourne!

Icon of Our Lady Igorevskaya for Icon Painting Workshop

We are really sorry for the delay. However, it took us a while to figure out what should be taught to people, who organize their exhibitions and lead their own icon schools all over Australia!

After discussing possible topics, and trying to find the answer for months, here it is:

The first one (as always) will be open to everyone. The chosen image is the icon of the Mother of God “Igorevskaya”. This means that students will have to study and paint two large faces, but we feel this is doable.

Model for Icon Painting Workshop Image of Crucifix

The second will actually be a double one. It is has been chosen for those students who have previously painted icons.

We have to confess, it’s for the first time ever that we have decided to make a workshop as a two-session series with one model, and we are very excited about this.

We will use an image of the Crucifix for painting an icon of the Crucified Christ without other figures. However, both sessions are planned to include many studies and research results, so we are sure it will be a fruitful time.

The plan is to work seriously, i.e. with lots of investigations and routine discoveries, so that the whole workshop could be experienced as a real immersion in a professional iconographer’s work. Please share this opportunity with others you may know who would like to join us.

The gessoed boards for the workshop icons will be made in the form of a cross. We have planned this so that these icons, when they are finished and varnished, can be used for church or personal veneration. We believe it will be a valuable practice and inspiration for everybody.

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To finish all the practical news, we will only share one tumbled stone and glass mosaic image as our fresh “production”. It’s a small section of a future iconostasis decoration by Philip Davydov. Other images are still in the planning stages.

Olga and I are both immersed in extensive projects which should be finished within several weeks or a couple of months.

Thank you very much for being our valued subscribers!

With warmest regards,
Philip Davydov and Olga Shalamova

Tag: Corso di iconografia in Italia

Nearly Finished!

Australia Rules!