Dear friend,

Thank you very much for your interest to our work and for the patience!
Our last Newsletter was published looong 4 months ago. Sorry, we could not make a new one earlier, - each of us worked with own projects and prepared for the exhibition at VTS. Most of this time Olga was painting icons and Philip was painting a little chapel in outskirts of Saint Petersburg with frescoes and decorating it with...

Well, - it will be described and shown in a few lines below, but first - the general list of our news. Here it is:

1. New icon by Olga Shalamova
2. A fresco and mosaics in Saint Leonid chapel
3. Opening of our Exhibition at VTS.�
4. Catalogue published.
5. Icon Painting�Workshops in Melbourne (January 2016) fully booked.
6. Announcing�Icon Painting workshop�in Washington DC (USA) �for Summer 2016
7. Possible Icon Workshop in Rome
8. Interview with Todor Mitrovic
9. Past: An Afternoon of Discussions in Charleston (SC) (Video)

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Starting with the images:

1. New icon of Baptism of Christ by Olga Shalamova (clickable):
   
2. Saint Leonid Chapel true fresco painting and mosaic decoration - realized together�by Philip Davydov, Olga Shalamova and Lev Davydov. Now is almost finished, so, I am posting the photos of the church and the process. In the future I plan to give more description - how the project came to life and explain my decisions, including the one about the sea-glass mosaic. In general it was a great project, hard work�and a great interest - to plan and organize the space with monumental. For now - just visual part, - about 60 photos, enjoy!
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3. Our�exhibition "The Living Tradition of Icon Painting" is opening at the Welcome�Center of Virginia Theological Seminary�the 7th of October and will last until the 21st of November this year. We plan to show about 30 images and �bring a catalogue of 40 of our best icons and frescoes (described below).�
   
   The address of the Seminary is 3737 Seminary Road, Alexandria, VA (USA) and the icons are going to be exposed in the Welcome Center - a first stop for the seminary campus�visitors.�The Exhibition is timed for the Emmanuel Chapel�Consecration, which is scheduled to start the 13th of October at 10.00 AM, followed by Choral Evensong and blessing of the icon, painted by Olga Shalamova at 4.00 PM.
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4. In these very hours a special Catalogue for the exhibition at VTS is being printed and we expect ready product next Monday, - hope all will be well. The catalogue of 9.5 X 95 inches�will contain opinions of following people: rev. fr. John Ball, iconographers�Aidan Hart and Fr. Silouan Justiniano, Irina Yazykova and full-page photographs of our works. It should be available at the VTS exhibition�for sure, we also plan to bring it to Melbourne when we come to teach the workshops. It took lots of efforts of many people, but we hope it to be a really good thing.�We are not sure if we can make it available for Print-On-Demand since we made the layout in centimeters, but hope it can also work.
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5. Both January Icon Painting Workshops in Melbourne are fully booked and now we even have 3 people on a waiting list. Therefore we would kindly ask those, who has already got their registrations, - if for some reason you feel that the workshop time is not fitting your schedule anymore, or your circumstances has changed... Or you just have changed your mind and�having scruples to ask about canceling and refunding, please, do not be uncomfortable to ask about cancellation�and we will refund the full payment as soon as we can do it, so, other people could be able to take your spot.
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6. We have finally got the dates�fixed for our � Workshops in USA and Canada in 2016:
   Washington�DC (USA): 13 - 17 June�2016, subject: Icon of Christ Pantocrator (See details)
   
   Calgary (Canada): 20 - 24 June�2016, subject: Advanced Icon Painting Course (3 faces in 5 days) (See details)
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7. Together with our friend�Fr. Ilya Gotlinsky�& his company �"ORTHODOX TOURS"�we plan an icon painting workshop in Rome, Italy tentative dates are 9-16th or 23-28th of�October 2016. Any preferences about the subjects?
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8. Long time ago Olga Shalamova wanted to interview our Friend Todor Mitrovic, and since he successfully finished his PHD dissertation. It finally happened and now we even have 2 versions of the text, - english and russian. But, since we did not have much time to polish well the english one, we were polishing the russian and it is going to be published by December in almanac Dary-II (Gifts-II) in Moscow.�
   
   But! Having the english version available I am going to do my best to publish it soon at our website. And I am very serious about it even if I know, that Fr. Silouan is going to use this interview as a draft for his own, adding special questions and editing the original version to make it as good as possible. So, in the nearest days I promise to do it and very probably we will have another Newsletter when our Exhibition opens and I take some pictures from there. Just some more days!
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9. Past: The Afternoon of Discussions.�
   On May 23rd, Iconographers Philip Davydov and Fr. Silouan Justiniano spoke at a symposium titled �Living Tradition: Painting Sacred Icons in the 21st Century�.
   
   The event was the first of its kind organized by the Orthodox Arts Journal. It was held at Holy Ascension Orthodox Church in Charleston, SC and it�was registered by Andrew Gould and Philip Davydov and now is available at our�Youtube Channel.

To be continued :)

With warmest regards,
Philip Davydov and Olga Shalamova

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