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Icon
The icon of Sts. Joachim and Ann in the new church building was written by Sister Nancy Lee Smith of the Immaculate Hearts of Mary (see biography below). Her studio, the Saint Joseph Studio, is located on the IMH grounds in Monroe, Michigan. For more information on Sr. Nancy's works, iconography and the Saint Joseph Studio, please visit her Web site at www.saintjosephstudio.com.
Sts. Joachim and Ann
…No words better communicate how blessed is the vocation of marriage than the icon of Ann and Joachim embracing. (Jim Forest, Praying with Icons)
Though not mentioned in scripture, Sts. Joachim and Ann are named in the Liturgy of the East. According to other writings dating to the second century, the Blessed Virgin Mary's conception by Ann, the Immaculate Conception, was announced by an angel to both elderly persons separately. Tradition tells that they came together with great rejoicing.
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Sts. Joachim and Ann, Icon handwritten by the iconographer, Nancy Lee Smith, IHM
(Copyright, Saint Ann Catholic Church and the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary) |
Their embrace at the entrance of Jerusalem is a spiritual symbol of their procreative union and through the centuries bespoke Mary's own purity, from the first moment without Original Sin. The merging of the two blue robes in this icon emphasizes still further the eager and complete unison of her parents' beings. The blue color tells that the event is touched by God.
The fierceness of their holding of one another reveals both their love and their joy after so many years of barrenness, viewed in Israel as shameful. Even their haloes become one form. The marriage bed indicates the great intimacy of this event, clearly more than an embrace.
Their feet rest on a platform, putting them into a present time and space, outside the city. The platform's configuration has a vanishing point, out in front of the icon, in the place where the viewer's human soul is, because the grace of God is operating through the sacred vehicle of the icon. The figures seem to leap off the board into our hearts and beings, saying, "Wake up! God is acting here, and, there, in you!" The red shoes Ann wears indicate that her role in the plan of God has a queenly stature.
More generally and true of all icons is the play and movement of light, emanating directly from their eyes, the windows of the soul. Light is God's, and it is Love, simultaneously. The haloes break into the upper border, indicating that love can never be enclosed, but will always expand and break barriers. It is the reason why the corners of the eyes are always spaced far apart, because love will exude and not stay within.
Nancy Lee Smith, IHM
©2004 Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, Michigan, December
Biography of Sr. Nancy Lee Smith, IHM
Nancy Lee Smith, IHM, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, began her art career at
Webster College and completed her fine arts training at Wayne State University in metal sculpture. She received a Master of Divinity from St. John Provincial Seminary in Plymouth, Michigan. As a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Michigan, she has been writing icons full time on the motherhouse campus in Saint Joseph Studio for eleven years, after earlier careers in teaching, chaplaincy, retreat ministry and administrating a parish with no resident priest. Her 75 icons hang in churches and chapels, hospital lobbies and private homes in the Americas and Europe.
She has written original icons of twelve founders and foundresses of religious congregations, often traveling to the primary sites of the subjects of her icons to research their lives. Her works are completed in acrylic occasionally, but generally are painted in egg tempera, that is, combining mineral and clay pigments with egg yolk.
Nancy apprenticed with Ksenia Pokrovsky, a founding board member of Izograph, the Iconographers' Society of Moscow, Russia. Nancy had two icons in a two year world tour of icons sponsored by Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA), selected by a panel of Russian Orthodox master iconographers and the curator of the Washington Arts Group. Her works have been exhibited in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in Detroit, Michigan and in Marriottsville, Maryland.
Nancy's icon design of the Crucified Christ, for a songbook, CD and cassette tape, won a silver medal at the National Printers' Competition in 2000, while her large circular icon of Rublev's "The Holy Trinity," hung in the Pope John Paul II Center for two years. Nancy completed two 12 foot triptychs, one for the front wall of Corpus Christi Parish in Toledo, Ohio, a church which won an E.J. Potente Award. She has a very large icon in Christ the King Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan, another in St. Mary of the Woods, Woodhaven, Michigan, and most recently, in St. Ann Church, Arlington, Virginia.
Trained by the Jesuits at Loyola Retreat House in Guelph, Ontario, and at St. Mary Retreat House in Oxford, Michigan, she has given spiritual direction and directed retreats, including the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and the 19th Annotation Retreat. She has received six units of an eight-unit certification program in preaching at Aquinas Institute, in St. Louis Missouri, in 1990-1992. Her last ministry prior to being a full-time professional iconographer and sacred artist was administrating a priestless parish in Moneta, Virginia.
Nancy gives presentations and retreats based on the iconology of icons, but with a view to how they are used for liturgy and for personal prayer. She presented and displayed her work at the International Conference of the Association of Christian Therapists in Denver, Colorado in October of 2003 and for the Toronto region of the same association in October, 2004. She has spoken at six motherhouses and provincial houses of congregations, as well as a Trappist Abbey twice.
Frequent topics for Nancy's presentations, retreats and written publications include: the use of icons in prayer, the techniques of the process and the spiritual dimensions of writing icons, relating them to the communion of saints. She states, "As an iconographer working in the Western church, I feel it is vital to educate Roman Catholics and others to understand and 'read' the symbolism in icons, thus unlocking the rich gift that they are."
A current member of the National Alliance of Liturgical Artists, Nancy has exhibited at Form/Reform: National Art and Architecture Conferences in Houston, Texas in 2002 and in Hollywood, California, 2004.
Education:
1995-2003 -- Seven Iconography apprenticeships
July 1992 -- Completed three of four preaching certification units at Aquinas Institute,
St. Louis, Missouri
August 1990 -- Mount Carmel Hospice, Advanced clinical Pastoral Education, Certification in Hospice
May 1982 -- St. John Provincial Seminary, Plymouth, Michigan, Master of Divinity Degree
August 1975 -- Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, Sculpture major
August 1962 Marygrove College, Detroit, Michigan, Bachelor of Arts Degree, English and Theology majors
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5300 North 10th Street  Arlington, Virginia 22205 (10th between Harrison and Frederick)
Parish Phone: (703) 528-6276 Parish Fax: (703) 522-4758 Religious Education: 528-6199 Parish School: 525-7599 |
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