My passion and love for iconography began about five years ago when the youth minister at my home parish of St. Bartholomew in Columbus, IN started to learn how to create icons. That was my first introduction to iconography and since then a profound love of the art form has flourished within me.

In the Byzantine Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, iconography is an extremely important part of their worship. Their worship spaces are covered with icons and the sacramental nature of icons is extremely complicated. They believe the person depicted in the icon to be present in it, and because of this, icons have much stricter rules and templates than most forms of art in the western church. Icons are not just an image someone comes up with and paints, but it's meant to be an image of the person in their heavenly form. This is why there's no clear directional light source and it seems that the icon is just Illuminated from all around or even within the person itself. 

I made my first icon in 2021 and was guided in creating it by my youth minister step by step. It was a simple image of Mary, just her head and shoulders, that I made as a Christmas gift for my mother. I have never been the most artistically talented person, but I found the style of iconography easy to understand and almost intuitive in a way that was a real blessing. After about a month and a half of work, I completed that first icon and was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. I could tell at the time that I might be good at this art form if I just gave it some effort and practice. I started my next icon soon after, and the improvement was astounding. My second icon was of Saint Anthony the Great, a very prominent Saint in the Eastern Church. Like my first one, it was a gift to someone else. In fact, to this day, I have not yet made an icon for myself. 

Since coming to Bruté, my schedule has been jam-packed with formation and classes. I plan to try to pour a little more time into iconography because I realized that I lost a good amount of the skill I had developed by taking so much time between working on them. To help regain some of my skill, I ran an icon workshop for my fellow seminarians who want to learn about iconography. It was great to see my brother seminarians try their best and bond while working on their icons.

I still have quite a lot to learn and wish to be formally trained by an actual iconographer one day. While here at Bruté, I plan on practicing what I currently know and maybe even learning some new techniques to help me cultivate a deeper relationship with Jesus and the saints through this beautiful artistic medium

Bruté Days 2023 was an incredibly grace-filled experience! 60 high school participants from across the archdiocese gathered for the three-day retreat at Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary. Another 40 middle school participants joined them for a one day retreat. There was a great spirit of joy, reverence and fraternity and our Eucharistic Lord was glorified! Stay tuned to our August enewsletter for a full recap on Bruté Days.