Pysanky

Father Paul Luniw of St. Michael's Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in Terryville, Connecticut demonstrates the art of making pysanky.



Talented Tuesdays is a feature which focuses on art, architecture, music, culture, food, and the running of the domestic church. User submitted questions and solutions are welcomed.



Frescoes at Mar Musa Monastery

The Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian (Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi, دير مار موسى الحبشي) is a Syriac Catholic monastic community of monks and nuns that is situated near the town of Nabk, Syria. The monastery is focused on religious dialogue particularly between Muslims and Christians. It's also the home to some beautiful medieval frescoes. The monastery's website can be found here.

From archaeological and historical evidence, we know that the monastery of St. Moses existed from the middle of the 6th century and belonged to the Syrian Antiochian Rite. The present monastic church was built in the Islamic year 450 (1058 AD), according to Arabic inscriptions on the walls, which begin with the words: "In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate".

The frescoes in the church date from the 11th and 12th centuries.

In the 15th century the monastery was partially rebuilt and enlarged. The monastery was abandoned in the first half of the 19th century and slowly fell into ruin. Nevertheless, it remained in the ownership of the Syrian Catholic Diocese of Homs, Hama and Nabk. The inhabitants of Nabk continued to visit the monastery with devotion and the local parish struggled to maintain it.

In 1984, restoration work began through a common initiative of the Syrian State, the local Church and a group of Arab and European volunteers. The restoration of the monastery building was completed in 1994 thanks to co-operation between the Italian and Syrian States. This Italian and Syrian school for restoration of frescoes was created at Deir Mar Musa in 1989 and will complete the restoration of the frescoes in the context of Syrian European co-operation. 

Read more about the church's frescoes as well as their architectural, agricultural, and interreligious dialog efforts here.

Talented Tuesdays is a feature which focuses on art, architecture, music, culture, food, and the running of the domestic church. User submitted questions and solutions are welcomed.



Nathan Hicks' Pilgrim Iconography

I recently interviewed iconographer Nathan Hicks about where his interest in iconography started, his apprenticeship, and the opening of his own icon studio.

Nathan: You have an icon studio called Pilgrim Iconography. I'd like to talk with you about how you became an iconographer. Were you always interested in art?

Art has always been a passion of mine, so yes. I've been drawing ever since I could remember, and started trying to draw comics around the age of eight. I was a huge fan of Spider-Man, and my parents probably saved all my old comics that I'd made. I was a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes, as well as Star Wars. At eight I'd decided to become a comic book artist.

When were you first introduced to iconography and how did that affect your vocational aspirations?

I've been around iconography in some way, shape, or form for my entire life. My father has an icon of Saint Nicholas that's been hanging on our wall since before I was born. It was that I was so caught up in what I was doing that I didn't really take the time to look. It wasn't until I was fifteen and saw Father Tom's iconography that I realized the potential for beauty and truth that iconography had. Right then I decided that iconography was what I wanted to do, and the rest, as they say, is history (well, history that I'm going to relate to you anyway).

Father Tom being Father Thomas Loya of Annunciation of the Mother of God Byzantine Catholic Church in Homer Glen, Illinois?

How did you come to see his iconography and what was it that made such a profound impression upon you?

Yes, Father Tom of Annunciation. He's a great man, and I can only hope to be half the man that he is. I started going to his church at fifteen, and the reaction that I had to those walls... someone had to yank me out of the church cause they saw I was about to start shouting in excitement.

One of the central tenets of iconography is that beauty and truth are connected on a profound level. This was something that I'd known long before I'd learned it from iconography. I honestly think it was the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes that first introduced the idea to me. There are so many moments in that comic that are hilarious, beautiful, and true, that I couldn't help but notice on some intuitive level that they seemed to be connected. When I saw Father Tom's work it was the most beautiful art I'd seen in my entire life, and therefore the most true. There was something in the way that Father used the color white that was amazing, and I found myself wanting to imitate that. 

Cultural Differences in Icons

Have you ever wondered what cultural differences there are in icons?

Most icons of given saints or events will have common, shared story elements.... In addition to these common elements - shared by most icons - icons often reflect the culture and tradition of the iconographer's ethnic background. There are four readily recognized ethnic types of icons: Greek, Russian, Arabic, [and Coptic]. When representative examples are placed side-by-side the differences become quite clear. 

This webpage offers a simple chart that will have you in-the-know on the four main cultural styles of icons in less than 2 minutes!

http://www.melkite.org/arabicon.htm

Talented Tuesdays is a feature which focuses on art, architecture, music, culture, food, and the running of the domestic church. User submitted questions and solutions are welcomed.



Stress-free pot-luck

I asked a few ladies to share some of their favorite recipes with me so that I could pass them on to you. I got a response that I couldn't wait to tell you about because it doesn't only contain a fabulous recipe, but also a sanity-saving tip for how to arrive at church on Sunday morning stress-free and well-composed with a pot luck offering that tastes great.

Marylouise leaves home around 8:20 AM on Sunday and might not get home again until 3:30 PM, depending on her other obligations. Her parish has a sit-down style pot-luck agape meal after Divine Liturgy every Sunday, which provides a great way to fellowship as they break their Eucharistic fast. It also means she needs to have her own dish ready to go early Sunday morning, which could translate to Saturday evening stress for many of us.

While individual adherence to the fasts varies from one household to the next, her parish's public meals have an expectation that the food will conform to the strictest fasting guidelines which are distributed to parishioners on a calendar each year. During non-fasting times, their priest generously brings meat and shellfish to the potluck, which will take the form of a Chinese dim sum demonstration this coming weekend to coincide with the region's celebration of the Chinese New Year. If you're near San Francisco, I encourage you to join them!

Marylouise favors vegetarian side-dishes that she can prepare in stages over several evenings, which keeps her from having a mad rush to fit it in on Saturday night. Here's one of her favorites: a Korean BBQ marinade she found in the October 1981 edition of Sunset Magazine which she's turned into a cold pasta salad that serves 8-10.

Ingredients:
1 C soy sauce
1/3 C sugar
2 ½ TB fresh garlic
2 ½ TB fresh ginger
1/3 C sesame oil

Extra firm silken tofu cut into 1/3" cubes

16 ounce package of angel hair pasta, cooked and refrigerated
2/3 C thinly sliced green onions

Instructions:
Mix the soy sauce, sugar, garlic, ginger, and sesame oil together well. Put the cut tofu into the marinade and let it soak in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, toss the marinaded tofu on top of the refrigerated pasta, garnish with the green onions, and serve. The entire dish will fill a 2QT serving dish.

This recipe could also use a grain instead of the pasta and cooked meats or veggies could replace the tofu. Marylouise says that the church hall's chilly temperatures don't hinder the cold pasta salad consumption as she usually brings home an empty bowl. One other great tradition her parish has is to informally bring photocopied recipes to share in preparation for the four major fasting periods, so the empty bowl and full tummy isn't all she has to take home on Sunday afternoon.

Talented Tuesdays is a feature which focuses on art, architecture, music, culture, food, and the running of the domestic church. User submitted questions and solutions are welcomed.



Armenian Coffee and Fruit

In honor of the Nineveh Fast that the Armenian Catholic Church, among others, will soon undertake in memory of the three days Jonah was in the belly of the fish, I bring you this glimpse into Armenian culture and food. It is traditional for Armenians to completely refrain from food and drinks over the three day fast. Abstaining from meat, dairy, and fish during the fast are still considered minimal expectations.

Armenian food is distinguished from other Mediterranean diets by its heavy emphasis on using fresh and ripe produce, few spices, and a lot of bulgur. There's one fruit that stands out in the mix:

I like to eat many fruits and vegetables. Maybe this comes from the fact that I am from Armenia, the place that is rich in fruits and veggies. But there is one fruit that I like most of all, and which has a special meaning for me. I think the reason again is the fact that I am Armenian.  -Marina Hovhannisyan; Krupnick Essay Contest Winner, 2006 

Because the work is presumably still under copyright, I've only quoted a small portion of it. Make yourself a cup of Armenian coffee following the directions below, then settle in to read the short essay about Armenia's national fruit at the Los Angeles Valley College's website here.

Talented Tuesdays is a feature which focuses on art, architecture, music, culture, food, and the running of the domestic church. User submitted questions and solutions are welcomed.



The Domestic Church

In Our Family and Home
by Father Romanos Russo of St. Ann's Melkite Greek-Catholic Church
Originally Published in Catholic Near East

Our mothers and fathers must rediscover their role as priests of the home. The parents bless their children, the food that nourishes them, and preach the most eloquent of sermons by the nobility of their conduct. They enable their family to celebrate the fasts and feasts of the year. The children, too, should learn to assume roles in the domestic church as soon as practical: they can help read the daily scripture passages, assist in the preparation of the foods proper to their tradition and tend the light before the icons.

Because the work is presumably still under copyright, I've only quoted a small portion of it. Read the entire article at St. Ann's website here.

Talented Tuesdays is a feature which focuses on art, architecture, music, culture, food, and the running of the domestic church. User submitted questions and solutions are welcomed.