Across Indiana
Works of Faith
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Where the precision of art meets the devotion of faith
Nearly every religion expresses itself through a unique visual language, its own iconography. In Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy holds one of the oldest and most enduring traditions, with roots tracing back to the first century AD. In 1994, Across Indiana producer J. Robert Cook delved into the world of Orthodox Christian iconography, exploring the craftsmanship behind this ancient art form.
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Across Indiana is a local public television program presented by WFYI
Across Indiana
Works of Faith
Clip | 5m 9sVideo has Closed Captions
Nearly every religion expresses itself through a unique visual language, its own iconography. In Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy holds one of the oldest and most enduring traditions, with roots tracing back to the first century AD. In 1994, Across Indiana producer J. Robert Cook delved into the world of Orthodox Christian iconography, exploring the craftsmanship behind this ancient art form.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(soft pensive music) - [Katherine] I was raised in the Episcopal Church.
My father, his father, and his maternal grandfather were all Episcopal priests.
So I left the church during my teen years.
There were just questions that I didn't know how to answer, and not having the maturity to pursue it further, I just threw the whole thing out the window.
And when I did really in my early twenties, feel a burning need for God again, through the circumstances of my life, through divine providence, the people that reached out to me were Orthodox.
- [Reporter] She is now known as Mother Katherine.
Although Nun Katherine would be more correct.
Born in Harlem, she has been a member of the St. Xenia Monastery in Indianapolis for the last two and a half years, where she has opened the eyes of many to a tradition that dates back to the first days of Christianity.
- [Katherine] Well, the tradition of iconography was begun by the evangelist Saint Luke, and he did the first icons while the Holy Virgin was still alive.
And they're seen as a way of communicating with the Lord, with the Holy Virgin, with the saints, with the angels who are in heaven.
So if you see an Orthodox crossing himself, bowing, kissing the icon, it's not a matter of venerating the material things, but it's a way of showing love and respect.
But icons are very stylized, and part of that is that we're not trying to show a three-dimensional world, we're trying to show a spiritual world.
So we deliberately defy the, the realistic ways of representing things.
You don't have true perspective, you have reverse perspective because we're trying to push the viewer into a spiritual reality.
So a lot of iconography is incorporating the art into one's own soul and making it one's own so that it can come out a natural way, really digesting the tradition.
And I'd say that's much harder than mastering the techniques.
- [Reporter] The techniques Mother Katherine employs have changed little since icons were first produced nearly 2,000 years ago.
First, a cartoon drawing is made to transfer the image to the board for painting.
The board is then coated with preparations of glue, linen and gesso, an artist medium made of chalk, glue and paint.
After the gesso has dried, if gold leaf is to be included, it is then added, but in a special manner.
- [Katherine] The most traditional way to do the gilding is to put down a clay bed where the gold will be.
And this is a very symbolic thing because in the gilding process, the iconographer reenacts or recapitulates something from Genesis, because Adam means red earth, and the clay is red.
And so that's put down first and then finished with very, very fine finish, even burnished.
And then a little bit of glue is put down.
And then the gold, which represents divinity, is fixed to the clay bed using the breath, just as God breathed into Adam, and he received the Holy Spirit and became a living soul.
That's also true of the fact that we paint from dark to light, because the evening and the morning was the first day.
There are many, many things that are symbolic.
And then after the gold is down, that's when the actual painting is begun.
Now, I don't know how other iconographers approach it, but my bishop gave me a special prayer and told me to bless the board with holy oil and a little bit of paint at that point.
The paint itself is made, it's egg tempera, and it's made using the egg yolk, a little vinegar and water, and then the powdered pigments, which are mixed into it just a little bit at a time, making each paint fresh.
- [Reporter] Since her arrival in Indianapolis, Mother Katherine has taught icon making to many students through the St. Andrews School of Iconography at the monastery.
She has even instructed a class at the Indiana Girls School.
- [Katherine] The girls did wonderfully.
I think everyone was impressed by their discipline, by their concentration.
I think they surprised themselves because we had long, rigorous hours.
We started classes at nine in the morning and didn't finish till eight in the evening.
And I think many of them found it very uplifting, and all the girls had finished icons that they could keep.
So iconography is a real challenge and a real workshop for developing Christian virtues that we all need for our salvation anyway, such as patience, perseverance, prayer, forgiveness, and accepting difficulties as something from the hand of God, not something that we get upset about.
(soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] For more "Across Indiana" stories, go to wfyi.org/acrossindiana.
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