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(Don't forget to press the thumbs up sign if you like an icon. It is above every icon painting after you click upon for a larger view.)
To view the complete Saint Gregory' Icon Project press the word 'website' in the upper right hand corner and got to the blog archive.
BIO STATEMENT:
I am a painter. I am also the ordained iconographer of the Saint John Coltrane Church of San Francisco. And I have recently completed The Dancing Saints Icon Project for St. Gregory's Church on Potrero Hill in San Francisco. As an African American I also bring my cultural and contemporary experience to a centuries-old icon tradition.
My liturgical icon work has been realized by two projects. These projects together have spanned almost twenty years of artistic endeavor and decidedly demonstrates my commitment and, along with my personal work, a pioneering spirit to the art of religious iconography.
The two churches that I am referring to are the Saint John Coltrane Church in the Fillmore and the Saint Gregory's Episcopal Church on Portero Hill. Both of these churches have been featured regionally in SF Weekly and nationally by other publications including the New York Times Magazine. Both projects have in common a selection of unusual and contemporary people as 'saints' and an expansive and inclusive view of spirituality that is a good counter-balance to the often damning and mind-numbing conservative beliefs of many.
For the John Coltrane Church, which Life magazine has called “the coolest place to be on Sunday mornings” (situated in the Fillmore District across the street from Yoshi’s), I have created icons for their world renowned 'Jazz Liturgy' depicting definitive sacred images of jazz great John Coltrane, the preeminent musician and jazz composer. Coltrane lived and explored an undeniably rich spirituality embracing many traditions that he attempted to express through his music. My icon work adds substance to the church's two prevailing mottos that 'God is cool' and 'Love is Supreme.' And indeed,'A Love Supreme' is the name of Coltrane seminal album and the music from it and the liner notes (the poem-like 'Psalm' that Coltrane wrote and published on the album cover) is played and sang together and is the heart of the jazz liturgy.
For Saint Gregory’s Episcopal Church of Portero Hill I have recently completed The Dancing Saints Icon Project after working on it for 11 years. (Contractually the Icon is considered finished but it is agreed upon that I will spend a few more months in the near future working on it as time and funds permit.)
At the beginning of this project in 1996 writer Gordon Young wrote, in his SF Weekly article “One Weird Church,' that this project was possibly “the world’s largest icon project in the last 100 years.” This article was written before the project’s scope increased by 50%. Initially, the Icon was to contain only 60 iconographic images of the larger than life-size saints. Subsequently, the project ballooned to 90 personages with a more complex celestial background. Among the selected 90 saints are people like Malcolm X, Queen Elizabeth, Rumi, Ella Fitzgerald, Gandhi, Anne Frank, Cesar Chavez, John Coltrane (of course) and Sorghaghtani Beki, the mother of Kublai Khan. The artistic challenge was to translate the ancient Byzantine stylization and bring it to fresh and contemporary places while still honoring the ancient tradition. The iconographic difficulties of recognizable likenesses, culturally diverse costumes, ethnic diversity and different spiritual traditions, all brought together in a large scale work has made this project unique in the history of art and religious iconography.
