Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Enders Island is located a few miles from Mystic Seaport. In the first week of May, I spent a rainy eight days there laboring, with some success, to produce three mural frescoes under the guiding hand of Chady Elias, a masterful religious artist who is the Vice President & Dean of Administration at Sacred Art Institute Enders Island  and the Adjunct Professor of Sacred Art at   Holy Apostles College & Seminary  in Cromwell, Connecticut. About the rain: I cannot help mentioning a morning prayer delivered by Sister Eugenia , a Master Catechist, after a sumptuous breakfast before we set out for the studio. It contained the usual appreciation and gratitude for all things large and small, with a slight knock “even though the weather has been not to our liking.”

Vladimirskaya (Kondopoga) Originally uploaded by jimforest The first time I came to St. Michael's Institute on Ender's Island, I put a question to one of the women who had made several icons previously: What had I let myself in for? She said, "You are about to pray an image into wood." On my most recent return in November, I was at least not a novice. I had made one icon under the tutelage of Vladislav Andrejev's son Nikita a few years earlier. Vladislav Andrejev is a masterful iconographer who had learned his craft at the hands of Russian monks and then went on to found a school of iconography, the Prosopon School. Andrejev now lives in New York, having immigrated to the United States in 1980. He has been teaching iconography in North America for more than 15 years. His icons, faithful to the Russian-Byzantine tradition, grace churches and homes both in America and elsewhere in the world. His son looked a little bit like a Russian monk; he was tall and...