Christmas Icon painter uses Eastern art to depict Native
American spirituality
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Special Report Writer West Redding, Conn.
For Fr. John Giuliani, icon painter
and leader of a popular worship center in southwestern Connecticut, a foray
into iconography began as an aid to living alone.
Giuliani had studied art, graduating from the Pratt Institute in
Brooklyn in 1952, but gave it up to become a priest. Some 17 years after he was
ordained for the Bridgeport, Conn., diocese, he asked for and got permission
from the late Bridgeport Bishop Walter Curtis to start the Benedictine Grange
here in 1977. A sacred space with a barn plank floor, the Grange attracts some
200 worshippers each Sabbath.
At first Giuliani was joined at the Grange by five religious
brothers. Over the next dozen years, each of the five left for reasons of
health, studies or ministry. Being alone I realized Id have to give
myself to some profound creative work or I couldnt maintain my
solitude, he said.
Giuliani commuted to New York City to study icon painting with an
Eastern Orthodox master. He learned the rules, how to prepare the wood, how to
begin by tracing. He started with an angel before attempting to paint a saint,
Mary or Jesus. He also realized how American he was, how Western his
spirituality.
He prayed: God, how can I use this discipline of iconography
without depicting religious figures in a Greek or Byzantine manner?
Giulianis eureka moment came in 1990 in the
frenzy of the national debate over the 500th anniversary of Columbus
arrival in the New World. Ill depict Native Americans as the first
spiritual presence on this continent, he told himself. He studied
artifacts of the various tribes, Navajo, the Hopi and the Sioux. He got to know
their artifacts -- their textiles, ornaments, weaving and beadwork.
I wanted to surround these religious figures with their
gifts, he said.
Requests for his work werent long in coming.
The Jesuits serving the Lakota in Pine Ridge, S.D., sought a work
to commemorate a religious personage. The Sioux Spiritual Center outside Rapid
City, S.D., wanted two of his works.
Giuliani met with Bishop Charles Chaput, a Franciscan, then bishop
of Rapid City, and started a long correspondence with him. Chaput, son of a
Potawatami mother, became Americas first Native American prelate in 1988.
Today as Denvers archbishop, he keeps a Giuliani icon of the Potawatami
Madonna in his office.
Post cards and posters of Giulianis art began to traverse
the country. They entered the dreamscape of Larry Hogan of Crow Agency, Mont.,
a stones throw from the Little Bighorn battlefield. Hogan envisioned the
ceiling of his parish church, St. Dennis, covered with mysteries in the life of
Mary depicted in the image and likeness of his Crow people. He sent Giuliani
blueprints of the tepee-shaped church.
The artist left Connecticut for the Great Plains. He didnt
want to misread Hogans dream, but he felt the paintings would
be too heavy for the tepees ceiling. Lets see
Marys human trauma at ground level, he said. The perspective was
persuasive.
On Sept. 15, 1999 -- Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows -- the Crow
Catholic community claimed The Crow Series, a set of Marian
mysteries in 13 icons with the final work a climatic rendering of the Trinity.
The three-by-six-foot panels are spaced across the churchs wall.
What theologians and Western artists long accepted as Marian
mysteries have become both poetic and realistic in their Crow
translation. The language holds no word for Assumption, but a Crow translator
titles this work: When They Take Mary to the Everlasting Land, Blessed
Kateri and Nicholas Black Elk Show Her Great Respect. Portraits of the
beatified Mohawk maiden and the Oglala visionary, on either side of the
crescent moon that cradles Mary, enhance the mystery.
Similarly, in the icon depicting the visit of the Magi -- the one
shown on the cover of this issue -- its Crow title becomes Chiefs Come
from the East to See Jesus and His Parents. The title reflects
Giulianis depiction of the three wise men as members of the Iroquois, Fox
and Huron -- tribes from the East of North America -- bestowing gifts of
feathers, moccasins and a beaded stole.
While the icons portray ancient stories that happened in the
Judean hills, the artist spreads the mysteries across the Montana landscape --
snow-covered Rockies sheltering the fleeing Holy Family on their winter trek
into Egypt. When Mary visits her cousin, it is spring. Flowers carpet their
meeting and mingle in their moccasins. Elizabeths robe is sewn with
shells, symbols of the fertility God has granted her late in life.
In his four Passion icons, Giuliani paints stark compositions
against a sky of scarlet, crimson and magenta. The panels awaken the
depths of divine compassion in the beholder, said Notre Dame Sr. Kathleen
Deignan, director of Iona Colleges Spirituality Institute in New
Rochelle, N.Y. Deignan was one of several supporters of the Grange who attended
the dedication ceremony in Montana.
In the panels, she found that the artist had married the mystical
aura of traditional iconography with the sensuality of Western European
painting and had rendered them in the form of an indigenous sensibility.
The faces remember and mirror the passion of the people depicted -- their
exile, their executions, their estrangement from their ceremonial ways, their
own frustrated destiny.
Chaput has called Giuliani a visual missionary. His
rendering of the Trinity as a great grandfather arched over the warrior hero,
Jesus, who wears the victory jacket -- with a sacred bird, the eagle, between
them -- uses images rather than words to depict the triune God. Native
Americans who have seen his work thank Giuliani for depicting their image as a
holy one. He was touched when an elder was overheard to be pointing out her
Uncle George in the face of one of the figures listening to the boy Jesus in
the temple.
Giuliani has received letters from Orthodox Christians accusing
him of doing great violence to iconography. In his replies, he
acknowledges that he views the icon as a window into the holy and has retained
its solemnity of form. I know I have intentionally stretched the canon. I
feel a certain liberation here, not guilt. He is proud that his work
celebrates Native Americans as the first spiritual presence on this land, and
that its also a visual ministry of reconciliation.
Using himself as a model, Giuliani would drape a blanket around
his body, observing its folds, or hed go to a mirror and study his hand.
Overall these icons are what I imagined, but they became much more
Italian. The love of nature, the love of realism comes through. Without
intending to, I painted my mother. My brother is in the Christ. The sheer
goodness emerges. Its whats in your soul that ends up in
acrylic on gesso board.
Besides the joy that accompanies creating works of art that could
heighten worship for generations to come, Giuliani has also experienced a
deepened prayer life as a result of hours of labor over many years. While
painting, he becomes totally self-forgetful.
Its an awesome process. You see that a gift has been
entrusted to you to develop and to transmit to another. To apply that concept
to work itself is a profound realization.
Its a lot like prayer, he said, noting that prayer is
not recitation and doing, but being in communion with the other.
Its the giving and disposing of ourselves in order to receive.
Im humbled by the hours of prayerfulness that were
granted me while giving birth to these mysteries, he said. I have
these children whove all left, he said of his icons that have found
homes. Theyre all living on their own. Now I just want to keep
having babies.
Giulianis work has appeared on NCRs cover
before. The Dec. 20, 1991, issue carried his icon titled Comanche Virgin
and Child.
National Catholic Reporter, December 22,
2000
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