Leanne Shawler, Artist

This week I am participating in Rachel Held Evans'   "Submit to One Another: Christ and the Household Codes"  synchro-blog . Although I kinda wonder if it should be "Paul and Peter and the Household Codes" because Jesus speaks of marriage making two people one flesh, not one subordinate to the other. (And also against divorce, which frankly I have a harder time with unless it's to compassionately rescue abandoned wives from their shame and sheer poverty as a result of divorce.) Anyway. Ephesians 5:21-6:9 so got my goat as a young adult (between 16 and 21) that I refused to read it if I was scheduled to read that Sunday. Nothing so dramatic as declaring this for all to hear, I would refuse and call in sick. (I know, very passive aggressive of me and to be completely honest, I'd make my mother call in for me.) This young feminist (me) who hadn't yet found her voice was disgusted at how out-dated this was. The times they have a'change...

Yesterday's icon writing was only a couple of hours. We have made it officially to the end of day one of the workshop! Today required a lot of detail work, filling in the small spaces. We started with hair -- and discovered that the container was faulty and our paint had dried up! So we mixed a new batch of hair color and while I was doing that, Helena mixed more halo red as we were a bit worried we might run out once we started shading. Lots and lots of layers of halo red later, as well as the storm blue color that just loved to lift right back up again and "Day 1" of the icon writing is complete.

Ladybird, ladybird Under the brim of my hat You're so out of focus But I can tell that You're headed to my hair And not to the light. Ladybird, ladybird, Go on -- take flight!

It's our second day at writing an icon and we haven't finished all that the students had done in their first day. yes their faces and hands are green. This is sankir. This is not because of stopping to snack on roasted red pepper hummus, raw garlic spread with dill (yum!) with rosemary and onion flat bread or stopping to make potato skins. Well, hardly all that. We also mixed some more sankir (green) paint because we worried we might run out. We didn't. All the layers of thinned paint (think milk consistency) takes for ever to put on. Especially the oxides which look streaky and take forever to lay down an even color. Why not slap it on at it's original consistency? 'Cause then you get dried acrylic ridges and what not which can make it tricky to layer color smoothly over the top. And I had the lifting of paint problem again. Said "Goddammit!" aloud when the one at the end of the pointy finger appeared out of nowhere and made Helena giggle. So it...

Eyes absorbed in the holy, In layers of paint To reveal a saint. I look up-- Out-- Grey and still, Is it fake? The head twitches. Squirrel! It's a horrible photo. It was late afternoon and I used my iPhone (may take better camera this week). He looked unreal until those little ears twitched and I did a double-take. No idea what the little guy was watching, but I watched him and finally mentioned him to Helena who wanted to spray water at him 'cause he's been eating her plants. (No idea from this angle, if said squirrel is actually a he or a she...)

The idea of icon writing is that you are copying from life, from an image that has been drawn and redrawn since St. Luke. (Photos taken with my iPhone whose camera lens needs a cleaning) major blocks sketched (some lines were erased after this photo)  Given that icons can be recognized by the styles (Russian Orthodox are quite distinctive) and by the materials used, being identical is not important. What is important is the prayer that goes into it -- which for me is a mix of silent wonder at the layers of paint going on and muffled cursing when paint goes where it shouldn't. Our workspace: I'm on the left, Helena on the right. Putting on super-thin layers of paint requires patience because if you try to rush, this happens: The paint lifts and then you have to be even more patient in putting layers over it because then it will lift more. We only got two colors down in this session: the dark red base color of her veil, and the tiny parchment. ...

tiny bird sipping at the fountain flutters if it dips too deep a green silver flash (written July 30, 2013) The bird was a hummingbird, which is just about impossible to take a good photo of, especially if you've nothing to hand but an old iPhone.