The icon workshop returns this summer

The popular workshop will return this summer (but this time participants will be wearing masks).

Icon workshop to return this summer

Suzanne Schleck to lead popular week-long offering

Before the pandemic, St. Stephen’s church hosted an annual weeklong icon writing workshop. Unfortunately, it was not safe to hold the class in 2020 nor 2021. The good news is that we are making plans to bring this popular offering back this summer, July 25-29.

While students use paints and a brush, artistic experience and painting skills are not prerequisites. The willingness to let go and trust are much more important for this prayerful activity. In fact, painters are said to be “writing,” rather than “painting” the icon.

Using the traditional materials of egg tempera and gold leaf on gessoed panels, students in this workshop employ techniques developed at the end of the Iconoclast period (before the year 1000 A.D.), in which, through a gradual, step-by-step process, the writer sees a face gradually emerge from the darkness, a face glowing with an internal light.

Each day begins at 8:10 with Morning Prayer and concludes at 5 p.m.

Iconographer Suzanne Schleck teaches this class. The retired public school art teacher has studied for more than 20 years with the Rev. John Walsted, master iconographer and expert on 14th to 16th century Russian icons, and has taken additional workshops with Robert Lentz and the Prosopon School of Iconography. Her work has been published in national Episcopal media and by Princeton Theological Seminary.

Participants in the previously-offered icon workshops—lay people and clergy who have come from the parish and beyond—have found it a deeply enriching experience and many are repeat students.

This workshop is extremely popular. We will open registration on March 15 at 11:00 a.m. You may register online at ststephensRVA. org/icon-registration or by calling the parish office at 804.288.2867, but not before 11 a.m. March 15.

All participants must show proof of vaccination (including booster), and all must wear N95 or KN95 masks while indoors.

Tuition ($375) covers instruction and materials, and some scholarship assistance is available. Participants are responsible for their own meals, and those who come from outside the area are responsible for their own overnight accommodations.

We are excited to be able to offer this wonderful opportunity again. Of course, if the public health picture changes as the dates approach, we will adjust our plans to keep everyone safe.