In Love with Icons

I didn't grow up with icons, being a small-town Oklahoma Methodist preacher's kid. I must have run across my first icon when I was living in Nashville as a young adult. In those days I was involved in justice work through Edgehill United Methodist Church and Nashville's Peace with Justice Center.

We were protesting against nuclear weapons and the oppression of the poor in El Salvador. The first icons I remember seeing were contemporary images by Robert Lentz, a Franciscan brother born in Colorado. Inspired by his Russian Orthodox heritage, he began to write icons that told the stories of contemporary saints.

The first two icons I ever purchased were Madre de los Desaparecidos (Mother of the Disappeared) and Harvey Milk. I still have an icon of the former. It tells the story of the mothers of those tens of thousands of family members who were taken by the death squads in Central and South American countries. The white handprint was a calling card of the El Salvadoran death squads.

At some point, I gifted my Harvey Milk icon to a friend. Harvey Milk was an out gay activist and political figure who was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978 along with Mayor George Moscone. The two of them had helped to pass a bill that banned discrimination against gays. I was a young gay person who was learning about the history of my people. I proudly put the icon of Harvey Milk on my wall.

After retirement, having moved my icon collection to my home office wall, I got to wondering about creating my own icons. I've been partial to Julian of Norwich for years, having done a piece of art portraying Jack the Scottie as Julian of Norwich. (Jack was so patient and forgiving of me dressing him up in all kinds of costumes. He never complained ... at least to me.) Could I draw something besides Scotties and purple elephants?

I really liked block printing and decided on carving an image of Julian with the message that "All Shall Be Well." That was almost two years ago when I started trying my hand at it. First of all, I got the words backwards. And then I ended up with "Julian of the Googly Eyes" and stuck the printmaking supplies into the back of my cabinet. And there they stayed for a year and a half.

More to come ...