2012 News
Retreatants bring home the art of iconography
January 18, 2012
Sarah Connolly (left) and Linda Moore (right) created the icons depicting the Annunciation for their parish, Our Lady of the Rosary in southeast Boise. |
Last summer at Spirit Center at the Monastery of St. Gertrude, Father Damian Higgins led a week-long retreat on the art of iconography. By the end of the week, each person had completed a seven-by-ten inch icon of St. Michael the Archangel. One might think that a second endeavor of writing an icon would result in an artwork of a similar size. But not for Sarah Connolly and Linda Moore, two of the retreat participants who returned to their Boise homes to initiate icons that would tower over them at eight feet tall.
After the retreat, Sarah began reading all the books she could find on icons. That’s where she discovered the 12th century Annunciation of Ustyug, from Russia. She felt immediately inspired and presented the idea of creating them to the September meeting of her Liturgical Environment Group at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in southeast Boise. “We wondered if it would be possible to get it done by Advent,” Sarah recalls. “But Linda just said: ‘If we don’t finish it, we don’t finish it. Let’s give it a try.’”
Jane Woychick, also a member of the liturgical group, offered two old barn-style garage doors from her 1913 house. “It was an answer to go ahead,” says Sarah. “Each door was 33” by 7’7” which together came close to the original Ustyug icon that is six feet by eight feet.”
“We were so blessed with support from everyone,” adds Linda. “We could tell the Holy Spirit was guiding us.”
They decided to use all the traditional methods they learned at the retreat. “First we did the Chaos Layer and then the Genesis Layer…every layer has theological significance. We layered just like we learned from Father Damian: from dark to light.” Making an icon is a form of prayer that follows traditional methods that date to the earliest years of Christianity. They are considered windows to heaven where there is only light, so the figures are shown without shadows. The creation of the figures begins “without form” like the chaos or darkness that existed before God created the world (Genesis 1:1-2) and develops progressively in layers. Icon figures have large eyes because they share the light of heaven into the darkness of the world. Looking out, they spread divine illumination.
Linda and Sarah, who had worked together on a sculptured manger scene several years before, met for six hours each day to work on the icons. They used traditional egg tempera. Aside from discovering that Linda’s dog had a taste for tempera paint, the process was blessed. “It was an amazingly prayerful experience,” says Sarah. “We would go all day without saying a word and then look at each other after working and just say, ‘Wow! How are you?’”
“I didn’t think they would come out as nice as they did,” reflects Linda. “I learned a lot about not being afraid to do something.”
The icons were finished by Advent and fit perfectly into niches on either side of the altar. They were blessed in Mass by Monsignor Dennis Wassmuth on the first Sunday of Advent. “One thing that helped is that we told our families right away so we wouldn’t give up,” says Sarah. “They were rooting for us. All their prayers made the difference.”