Kathy Sievers (center) teaches iconography at Queen of Angels.
Benedictine Foundation of Oregon photo
MOUNT ANGEL — The iconographer has been called “the monk of artists,” and the folks associated with the Iconographic Arts Institute, held during the past five summers at Queen of Angels Monastery, have found that monastic women and iconographers blend well together.
“The Monastery is a wonderful place and this is a very, very good fit,” says Mary Katsilometes, iconographer and institute teacher. “Benedictines have always been supporters of the arts. There is the monastic discipline of work and prayer – the prayer is work and the work is prayer . . . There is a sense of integration of our group with the Sisters and the Sisters with the iconographers.”
Benedictine Sister Gertrude Feick, who coordinated hospitality for the Iconography Institute, agrees.
“The work the iconographers do is very prayerful,” she says. “They flow into the rhythm of our community. It is wonderful that they join us for prayer and Eucharist during the workshop.”
The Benedictine Sisters interact with the artists in a number of ways during the session. The prioress blesses the hands of the teachers and students at the start of the workshop and, at the end, blesses the icons that have been created.
“It helps our work tremendously to have the Sisters involved with us and praying for us,” Katsilometes says.
The Iconography Institute has offered three classes during the summer workshop. One is for beginning iconography students, one is for intermediate and advanced students, and one is a practicum for the most advanced students who are beginning to work at a professional level. The sessions are each about eight days long and are held back to back.
This year, the institute added an offering, an introduction to illuminated manuscripts. There were seven participants in the six-day workshop, which was taught by Jean Germano. Germano served as art director for OCP for 20 years until her retirement. The students worked on miniatures.
“Our goal was to give the students a way to find a prayerful time,” Germano says. “The miniatures draw you in . . . as small as they are, there is a lot there. As you work on them, you are contemplating and praying. They said it was a wonderful experience.”
Illumination as a form of sacred art followed iconography in the Middle Ages, Germano explains. Part of the appeal for her is the slow and contemplative process that is involved in creating an illuminated manuscript.
“We live in a world that is fast-paced and out for instant gratification,” she says. “This (art form) is definitely not fast nor is it instant gratification.”
Students are trying to get close to what the monks did centuries ago, but do take advantage of modern materials. For example, the pigments are already ground.
The Iconographic Arts Institute has been in existence for 25 years, evolving out of a series of artist retreats held in the early 1980s at the Abbey Retreat House. The first two teachers at the Institute were Michael O’Brien and Charles Rohrbacher. Kathy Sievers began teaching the beginners’ class in the early 1990s, and she was joined a few years later by Mary Katsilometes. The two women continue as the driving force behind the institute.
“What Kathy and I have done over the years is to develop a structured curriculum,” Katsilometes said. “It starts with the simplest icon and progresses through the most complex. We are trying to let the icon be the teacher . . . Our purpose is to empower students to work on their own (since) we are a dispersed community.”
Katsilometes says the resurgence of iconography as a sacred art form is an important spiritual development.
“There is a movement of the Holy Spirit to bring the beautiful back into the Church,” she explains. “Iconography is grounded in the Incarnation. It is not just ‘sacred art’ but is a sacramental, an expression of the word of God, held to be on par with the written word in Holy Scripture.”
The Iconographic Arts Institute differs from other training in the U.S. “We teach, not only technique, but also the theology and spirituality of the icon. Our emphasis is on training people in the drawing of icons with a grounding in sacred geometry . . . People come to the institute from all over the United States and Canada.”
The Iconographic Arts Institute is linked to the European community of iconographers through Jesuit Father Egon Sendler. Father Sendler is, according to Katsilometes, “one of the foremost scholars in the theology of iconography. He insists that a key function of the icon today is that it is ecumenical by nature and transcends our differences.” Among other books, he wrote The Icon, Image of the Invisible God, which is used extensively by the institute. Both Sievers and Katsilometes have traveled to Europe to study under Father Sendler.
The institute offers fall and spring courses on Byzantine drawing at St. Phillip Neri Church in Southeast Portland. For more information on the institute’s offerings or icons, visit www.iconinstitute.org, or call 503-833-2012.
