Online Class!!! Mixed Media Icon Doll

This is Madame Butterfly, one of my icon dolls. You will choose your own character to personify. Although I will teach you my techniques, my goal is to assist you to stretch your creativity.

3 weeks, Aug. 7 - Aug. 29, $30

Chaska@ix.netcom.com to sign up

The Eastern Orthodox Church fully ascribes to the teachings of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (see above), and celebrates the restoration of the use of icons after the period of Iconoclasm on the First Sunday of Great Lent. So important are the icons in Orthodox theology that the ceremony celebrating their restoration is known as the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

In the traditions of Eastern Christianity, only flat images or bas relief images are used (no more than 3/4 relief). They believe the first icons of Christ and the Virgin Mary to have been painted by St. Luke. Because the Eastern Church teaches that icons should represent the spiritual reality rather than the physical reality, the traditional style of Orthodox iconography was developed in which figures were stylized in a manner that emphasized their holiness rather than their humanity.

Traditional icons differ from Western art in that they are not romantic or emotional, but call the viewer to "sobriety" (nipsis). The manner of depicting the face, and especially the eyes, is intended to produce in the viewer a sense of calm, devotion, and a desire for asceticism. Icons also differ from Western art in that they use inverse perspective (giving the impression that the icon itself is the source of light), and for this reason make very little use of shadow or highlight. The background of icons is usually covered with gold leaf to remind the viewer that the subject pictured is not earthly but otherworldly (gold being the closest earthly medium in which to signify heavenly glory).

My own idea of an icon doll is a formal, static rendering of an important figure. I would want my figure to command reverence, respect, and...perhaps...a bit of mystery.