09/15/11 Art News Blogger Carolee Ross

Carolee Ross' Art Scene

I've interviewed a fascinating range of fine artists over the years in many publications such as Art and Antiques, Time-Mirror Newspapers and Art Scene for the Hour. My mission here is to bring the work of gifted artists to the public eye and do it with accuracy, writing excellence, a bit of humor and artistic insight.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

ICON: New Images of the Holy

ICON: New Images of the Holy

By Carolee Ross (copyright 1989)

This story may not be reproduced or copied in any way without express permission of the author.

Writers note: I first met and interviewed Father John Giuliani over twenty years ago, and my feature story was published in the Times Mirror Newspapers, Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate and several of their syndicate newspapers. Since then, Father John Giuliani has gone on to win numerous awards and see his artwork accepted unanimously by religious institutions across the board. Last year at the Vatican, Father John presented to Pope Benedict, his icon of Blessed Kateri, the Mohawk woman who is in the process of becoming the first Native American Catholic saint. The article is virtually unchanged, with the exception of Father Giuliani’s newest honors and his more recent work.

Holy Family with Lamb
by Father John Giuliani
all images courtesy of Hillstream LLC

Benedictine Father John Giuliani has picked up the paintbrushes he

put away over thirty years ago.

His search for an artistic statement has taken him on a creative journey with roots deep in the past, culminating in an outpouring of powerful, present-day icons. He chooses random, worn pieces of wood as surface for his expressions and transfuses them with the imagery of a proud culture now almost forgotten.

Father John calls his icon paintings “windows of the holy, which point to the presence of God.” He uses no models. The works are reflections of the pictures he can visualize in his mind's eye.

There are however, visual surprises in store. For aside from the earliest examples of the artist-priest's more traditional paintings, the experience goes beyond what we recognize in Western culture as Christian icon. Blending the faces of Native American tribes, the Navajo, Lakota, Cheyenne and Hopi with the stylistic canons of classical holy Byzantine painting, the artist has created a dynamic synthesis, evoking symbolic and ritualistic references to the magic of totemic art.

Chocktaw Madonna
by
Father John Giuliani

The works have been displayed in a variety of venues, including museums, galleries and churches across the country and in Europe. His work has been exhibited at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Marian Institute in Dayton, Ohio, the Basilica of St. Mary and at the Aldrich Museum in Ridge­field, Conn. Several dozen of his works are in private collections throughout the country and in Italy.

The Native American icons vibrate with brilliant, undiluted colors and rhythmic patterns, displaying an intrinsic sense of design and a masterly ease of composition. They are not, however, merely portraits of a people, but embody the underlying spiritual essence of the subjects as well, similar to the mission of ritual art created by Native tribal craftsmen. The viewer is transported back to a mystical time when the artist was an instrument of communication between the world of soul and physical surface, icons the primary vessel, and spirituality the guiding philosophical force.

Lakota Joseph and Child
by Father John Giuliani

During an interview at the Benedictine Grange Gallery, Father John, a gentle, articulate man, spoke with a sense of joy and wonderment as he recalled the varied capacities in which he has served the community. He has been – an ordained Catholic priest, a teacher, a chaplain, founder and guiding theologian of the Benedictine Grange in West Redding -- and visionary painter.

The son of Italian immigrants who settled in Greenwich, he recalled a creative family heritage, filled with craftspeople, carpenters, tailors, “all of them working with their hands, making forms. Even my brother Vin, (later to become a professional artist), was always hammering away at some old pieces of wood for an art project.”

Since our interview, Father John has established The Amalia & Nicola Giuliani Foundation for Religion and the Arts, an independent foundation that provides grants to organizations operating in the areas of religion, the arts, and education.

Amalia and Nicola Giuliani
Father John Giuliani's Parents

Father John remembered his childhood and Greenwich of the 30's and 40's as a wonderful environment for an artistic child, with family and teachers constantly encouraging him to draw and develop his artistic gifts. And draw and paint he did, going on to complete undergraduate studies in Fine Arts at New York's Pratt Institute. Then, responding to a different calling, he earned an M.A. in Theology from St. John Seminary in Boston, and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1960.

That same year, Father John put his brushes away. “I willingly put the art aside because of my greater love for God's visitation in a new way,” he said. “But like all good things, it was to eventually return.”

He completed additional M.A. degrees in American and Classical Studies in preparation for a teaching career at local diocesan schools, and eventually served as chaplain at Sacred Heart University.

The closest association with the art world was a humanities lecture series on Film Appreciation at Fairfield University, where he surveyed American film through the eyes of sociologist. “We explored our times,” he says, “from looking at the violence of the 60's to examining the American character as portrayed by stereotypical male and female roles.”

In 1976, feeling a larger need to serve the community, he founded a chapter of the Benedictine Grange in West Redding, a religious order noted for their preservation of classical civilization during the Middle Ages, encouragement of learning, and their devotion to fostering hospitality. The Grange responded to community needs with the establishment of the Good Shepherd House soup kitchen in South Norwalk, worship services which are open to all, and the maintenance of a guest house on the serene site of the Grange property.

Shortly after the Grange was established on a hill overlooking the Redding countryside, Father John experienced an awakening of consciousness to the previous inhabitants of the land, the Native American civilization. A Franciscan sister of Lakota extraction paid the Grange several visits, and shared her belief that the property was a holy site. “She recognized the spirit of the Native Americans who had been here generations before, which was an affirmation of exactly what we were feeling,” said Father John.

Seminole Madonna
and Child
by
Father John Giuliani

At the same time, the priest began a study of American Indian culture, from tribal art to spiritual traditions. “I learned about the Native American reverence for the land and the wonders of the spirit and felt that the religious philosophy of the Catholic Church and the customs of the Native Americans were not in contradiction with one another."

“It was then we decided we would try to enhance the Roman liturgy by incorporating Indian rituals as a celebration of the Native American spiritual legacy. There are so many similarities. Where the Catholic Church uses incense, the Indian used sweet grass and herbs in purification rituals. And on Thanksgiving, we now wear beaded moccasins and purify our barn with sweet grass.”

“The Indian prayed to Brother Sun, and Sister Moon,” explained Father John, “and if you will remember, St. Francis of Assisi called the animals his brothers and sisters and wrote of Brother Sun and Sister Moon in his Canticle of the Sun.”

After these beliefs were integrated into his theology, Father John sought more time for personal meditation and solitude. “The more space we make within ourselves, the more capacity we have for sources of inspiration," he said. "We dip into it -- each soul is the well and the source of inspiration.”

And then, new inspiration came. “About a year ago, Easter morning, an artist friend was visiting and we were speaking of light and radiance. We simultaneously agreed that we should be painting sacred icons to express our joy. I was ready to be an art student again.”

He studied at the School of Sacred Art in New York City, where students are instructed in age-old techniques of Byzantine methodology. They prepare wooden surfaces with gesso, doing the meticulous sanding necessary for the flawless surfaces required, and are taught to observe the absolute dictates of color and form according to Byzantine iconography. There is little room for free expression within the art form.

“Just as when I was a young man at Pratt, I was told to forget everything I had ever learned and I tried to,” said Father John. “But I realized at the end of my studies that this was not quite what I wanted to express. I wanted a different way to render iconography, my own path to imaging the Holy.”

He embarked on his artistic search, still working in basic Byzantine format, but substituting acrylic paints in place of customary egg tempera. His pieces, instead of being smoothly sanded, were rougher hewn, with obvious flaws.” There is something about the worn and the used that teaches respect for all gifts in Nature,” he said. “And perhaps I was remembering and paying homage to the type of wood my late brother Vin had used in his art.”

Searching for further sources of inspiration, he went back to contemplating his collection of American Indian portraits and artwork. Suddenly, he could visualize bright Navajo weavings swaddling the baby Jesus, or encircling the arms of the Blessed Mother.

“I started by selecting a group of patterns in keeping with the theme of icon as spiritual power. It was an act of reverence on my part for the legacy these people had given us,” he said. "And I began to paint the Native American as the Christ and the Virgin, identifying with their powerful spirituality.”

“When I first started painting my early icons, many of them looked more like Quattro Cento Italian Mammas than elongated, delicate Byzantine Madonnas,” he laughed, pointing to an early Virgin and Child on display. “It must have been my Italian heritage coming through. And then, when I started using Indian faces, the energy just poured through me.” Shaking his head in amazement, he recalled, “I would come out of my studio, astonished that a whole day had flown by. The works you see here were done this summer in only three months of around-the-clock work.”

(Asked to explain his decision to portray the faces of the sacred as Native Americans, Giuliani explains:

“As a Catholic priest and son of Italian immigrants I bear the religious and ethnic burden of ancestral crimes perpetrated on the first inhabitants of the Americas. Many have been converted to Christianity, but in doing so some find it difficult to retain their indigenous culture. My intent, therefore, in depicting Christian saints as Native Americans is to honor them and to acknowledge their original spiritual presence on this land. It is this original Native American spirituality that I attempt to celebrate in rendering the beauty and excellence of their craft as well as the dignity of their persons.”

"Describing the work called Lakota Annunciation, Father John reflected, “This woman looks so much like my own mother - we really are all one.” He pointed to the large bird above the Madonna's head, explaining the imagery. “The Falcon was the holy bird for the Indian, so where the Christian iconography uses the dove as the holy spirit, I substituted the Falcon."

Hopi Annunciation
by
Father John Giuliani

He paused again, considering another painting. “I first saw the costume in this work at a museum. The sleeves were outstretched exactly like this and I could see this was my pose for the Lakota Assumption.” The image which came to him after leaving the museum, was that of a young Lakota maiden, rising among the Sun, the Moon and the Stars of Heaven, as in the prayers that have been so successfully assimilated into Grange services.

A seated Lakota Virgin and Child sums up the artist's romantic concern with specific detail; the graphic rendering of beads, jewelry and feathers, the imaginative suggestiveness of halo. This is a Madonna whose ethnic traditions are part of her identity, represented with the solemn dignity reserved for the mother of a tribal chieftain.

The only stylistic remnant of Byzantine training which remains in these later works is the treatment of the hands, with the slender, almost ethereal fingers which seem more of the spirit than of the flesh. Otherwise, the figures are portrayed in robust, full bodied form and frontal presentation, confronting the viewer directly, as opposed to the softly curved, outwardly gazing compositions of classical icon painting.

“I have been very humbled by all of this," Father John concluded. “These hands that had not used a brush for so many years were liberated. It is with gratitude that I open these windows to the holy presence of the spirit in human form. I have been gifted with the love of God and the liturgy of creation.”

ABOUT ME Carolee Ross' Art Scene Carolee Ross' background and education includes degrees in Fine Arts, Art History and Communications from Hofstra University (Summa Cum Laude), where she won the Rittmaster scholarship for excellence in art history and continued her graduate work at Columbia University. She has written art reviews, feature stories and personality profiles for Art and Antiques Magazine and Times-Mirror Newspapers, which received multiple first-prize awards from the Connecticut Press Club and the National Federation of Press Women. Ms. Ross was elected to Who's Who in Journalism in 1993. She taught art history at Hofstra University and presented a multimedia art appreciation series, The Great Masters, at various galleries, learning institutions and libraries throughout Fairfield County, Connecticut. She served as an arts panelist for the Bruce Museum, the Loft Artists Association and Silvermine Galleries. View my complete profile