Hello everyone.
This is Father Paul and I hope you're having a good day.
You're listening to Copts in Conversation.
Alright, hello everyone.
Welcome to Copts in Conversation and today I'm having a conversation with Kyrgios Kylada.
So let me tell you about him a little bit before we get into it.
Kyrgios is an artist based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
He holds a Bachelor's of Design from OCAD University and is currently pursuing a Master
of Theological Studies in MTS in Orthodox Christian Studies at Trinity College at the
University of Toronto.
His research focuses on iconography, sacred space and beauty within Coptic Orthodox tradition.
Kyrgios has been commissioned to paint Coptic icons for churches and homes in Canada, the
United States, Australia and Europe both for Copts and other Christians.
As an iconographer, he endeavors to produce icons which are in symphony with centuries
of Coptic tradition firmly rooted in art history and Orthodox theology through an approach
that is dynamic and contemporary.
Recent projects include the Baptistery of the Church of St. Philopetoea in Guelph, Ontario,
Canada and the Sanctuary and Chorus of the Chapel of St. John Chrysostom at St. Mary's
Coptic Orthodox Church, Melbourne, Australia.
Welcome Kyrgios.
Thank you, everyone.
It's good to finally have the opportunity to sit down and have this conversation because
not every day you get to meet a young man who's so passionate about what he's doing.
How did you know when you were growing up?
Did you have any idea that you're going to be an iconographer?
Did you have any inklings that this is where you're going to end up?
So I was always drawing and painting and just making things.
I was initially at St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church in Toronto.
I was there as a very young child where I was friends with another iconographer, George
McCary, and we were young children at the time and I think both of us were very fascinated
by the iconography that was in the church.
These were talking about the Mother Church before they built the cathedral.
So there was no cathedral at the time and it was the church that Abouna Marcos built
which was painted by Bidour Latif and Youssef Nassif.
And they were a married couple and there's something so beautiful and charming about
their iconography.
Their style is quite unique and some people would characterize it as having a lot of aspects
of folk art.
There's a lot of decorative elements and pattern and floral motifs and things like that.
Birds flying around in the background for no reason whatsoever.
So they really bring you into another world.
The church in St. Mark's was so beautiful and we had the chance to be there every Sunday
and just constantly staring at all these icons.
I knew that I wanted to learn how to do that maybe in about grade one or two.
But I mean obviously not for any reason other than that I thought it looked very nice.
My parents instilled in us a love of God and the saints and stuff.
So it made sense to have a desire to do that even though I didn't understand it much.
And at the time my mom spoke to one of the priests in St. Mark's who told us that there
were classes being taught by Seham Gerges who was a student one of the most prolific
students of Dr. Isaac Fanous who maybe later will have the opportunity to explain who Isaac
Fanous is.
Because we're throwing a lot of names here.
So she was teaching classes at St. Mark's and Abuna just told us that it was for older
people and that when I was older I would have the opportunity to join those classes.
And then we moved to Mississauga when I was in grade three which is when I had you as
a Sunday School Servant.
Wow way back in the day.
And the fascination with iconography like maybe was I wouldn't say dormant like nothing
was really going on for a while.
And then my mom met someone in service by the name of Hani Haneen and she found out
that he had studied under Isaac Fanous in Egypt as well at the Institute of Coptic Studies.
So she introduced me to him and he became my teacher and mentor and I was in about grade
seven or eight.
And he started to have classes to teach iconography to the kids.
He moved to the church in Milton and started to hold these classes in Milton and my mom
would drive me and my sister and my cousin Marco who is now a filmmaker from St. Mary's
here in Mississauga to the church in Milton every Sunday after Sunday School to go and
take iconography classes there.
George and I remained in contact like we remained close friends and we would see each other
every now and then.
He still lived in Toronto and then he moved to the US in high school.
And so in high school, oh I should also add that another lady, Marianne Barakot, she came
and joined these classes and she's a student of Galen Ramsey who is the earliest student
of Isaac Fanous.
And he painted our church here in St. Athanasius in the 1980s.
So, she came and also contributed a lot to that class.
So during those formative years I was really taught by Hanny and Marianne together and
they each had something different to offer.
For Uncle Hanny it was like the love of God and the saints through iconography.
Like you felt that the arts were the love language between him and God and it was contagious.
And Marianne also, she would speak about the saints that she was painting as if these were
people that she knew personally.
So that passion and love really inspired me as a kid.
And she also brought in a lot of her technical experience from working with Galen and then
she actually ended up moving back to Egypt shortly after.
And Uncle Hanny had to go complete his studies for medical.
He was a medical doctor so he was doing his equivalency and all this stuff.
So suddenly I didn't have any teachers.
No more classes, no more teachers.
Nothing.
So for all of high school I was basically just painting icons on my own and exchanging
emails with George who was in the US by then.
And then through high school I was trying to figure out what I was going to do in university
and I knew that I wanted to do something that involved drawing.
My passion for science kind of fell off in maybe grade nine or ten when things became
too complicated and hard to memorize.
Very clear.
Love brained.
Yeah.
And then so my parents encouraged me to try more viable careers like architecture or graphic
design and I tried and I talked to people and those routes didn't really do it for me.
So I decided to enroll in the illustration program at OCAD University and I got accepted
and I went in there wanting to just be an illustrator and the program at OCAD which
was a fantastic program was very much geared towards editorial illustrations so publications,
newspapers, magazines, the advertising industry as well with everything that that entails.
So that's kind of how the program was constructed.
So I didn't go in there with the plan of becoming an iconographer.
I don't think anybody really plans to become an iconographer.
It just happens.
It's just divine providence.
You're led into that kind of space.
I mean for me it was like God put people on my path who made that possible.
So after my first year of art school I ended up meeting the iconographer Fadi Mikhail who
is from the UK and he was in Toronto working on the Church of St. Maurice and St. Verena
SMSV and he did it in multiple phases.
So the first time I met him he was doing the sanctuary and that meeting was very brief.
I came with a bag full of my icons and just kind of showed them to him during his lunch
break and George had already kind of reached out to him and then in the year following
a little group chat started with me and George and Fadi where George and I would just paint
icons send them to Fadi and he would give us feedback and we both improved dramatically
during that year and the following summer George moved back to Canada to enroll at OCAD
as well in drawing and painting and Fadi came back to SMSV to finish his work to do some
more icons.
So that summer he ended up having us on as assistants in the project for the whole time
that he was there and then the summer of 2018.
This must have been the summer of 2018 because I graduated high school in 2016 and then I
met Fadi for the first time in the following summer so that must have been the summer of
2018 and then the summer after that he was commissioned to do the sanctuary of St. Moses
and St. Catherine's Church in downtown Toronto.
So he had us on as assistants for that project again and the importance of the tasks that
Fadi was giving us kept increasing so he ended up just giving us the 24 priests to do in
the sanctuary so George and I painted those together at St. Moses and St. Catherine and
then he came back to SMSV the year after that to do the chapel downstairs and he just kind
of took us under his wing and mentored us and we started getting work of our own and
I graduated from the illustration program at OCAD during Covid.
My thesis project at OCAD had nothing to do with iconography but I created an icon of
the resurrection for my family because we couldn't celebrate the resurrection at church.
So we did Basra at home and I created an icon that was double sided.
The resurrection on one side and the crucifixion on the other side and we used it so my family
used it for Basra and then for the feast and I posted it online and that icon I think really
that's what got things started for me in terms of doing this professionally because it got
a lot of attention and people were really excited about it and then I started to get
more and more work and Father Corrillis Atea in Milton in 2021 so shortly after he ended
up giving me a small chapel to do at his parish and at the time I told him I've always wondered
who's the crazy priest who's going to take a risk on me when I have nothing to show for
and I really had no wall painting experience other than the times that I assisted Fadi
and Abou Rackourillis took a risk on me and that project went well and that led to the
project that I just completed in Melbourne so by God's grace things are going well and
thank God that's amazing who knows what things will go after that if I'm hearing you correctly
it's all due to that wonderful Sunday school servant you had in grade three when you first
moved here that's what really inspired you and got your father Paul Gurgis.
What an amazing story and you can clearly see looking back at it the hand of God guiding
you from one person to the next handing you over developing your thought your technique
that's amazing absolutely and the couple you mentioned earlier I would say Mark it's
rare it's unique almost to find someone who's like couple both husband and wife are iconographers
it's usually like one or the other.
Yeah yeah Badour Latif and Youssef Nassif are a fascinating example and they used to
say that they were so in harmony or in sync with each other that they couldn't tell you
who painted what in an icon you know Badour would begin the face and then Youssef would
come back and finish it and then they would switch and work on other things and so those
icons were really a product of actually like the love and harmony that existed between
them and the end result is just works of great beauty and freshness you know it's you look
at their work and it's very recognizable as Coptic you know it has that this in dip it
has I can't speak it has this like Egyptian indigenous flair to it.
It's unmistakable you can't take it for granted.
But at the same time it's totally unique to them so I think it there were kind of challenges
us to think about you know questions related to tradition and things like that because
very important it has that that freshness but also fits right in a Coptic church you
walk in and you know where you are right away right exactly and on that note when when you
see an icon you know that it's an icon so what makes an icon an icon is it just the
style is it specific elements specific colors when you when you when you see one you know
what you're seeing so how can you tell you know what you're seeing yeah that's a really
difficult question and I think there's a lot of people who would like to who would like
to give like a very simple one-liner or you know a basic criteria that or the cruelest
color the hot take on like a checklist you know like like an icon is you know check check
check it's almost beyond the like the technical aspects of it like it surpasses that right
it's that but more right but but the technical aspects play a role our late professor Richard
Schneider at the University of Toronto one of the things that he said that really changed
my perspective is that the icon requires the eyes of faith from a viewer who can look and
interpret what is being depicted in the icon so like all good art the icon requires a viewer
but in this case the viewers aren't passive the viewers are doing something they're engaged
in the the journey of Christian life way the climax of that being liturgy so to start maybe
in a very vague way we can say that the main criteria of what makes an icon an icon is
liturgy does it work for liturgy right if we want to answer that question we need to
know what liturgy is and what it's for and what we're doing there so it's starting to
seem more and more evident to me that we actually can't discuss iconography apart from a like
a robust liturgical theology so what are we here in liturgy to do we're in liturgy to
be present in the kingdom of God to unite with Christ and with each other and there's
an element of harmony that's there so when you think about the symphony of liturgy and
this is where style sort of comes in if I go to Coptic liturgy and we're praying using
the Coptic rite with Coptic music and Coptic architecture it doesn't make sense to then
have like you know art from a different tradition even if it's from a tradition that we would
consider an orthodox tradition like let's say you know you had Byzantine icons you know
Byzantine icons are nice you know or Ethiopian icons or whatever it is but though they express
orthodox tradition they don't necessarily fit within that Coptic symphony or that Coptic
way of doing liturgy so it's not a matter of right and wrong it's a matter of harmony
right so breaks the harmony yeah stands out yeah but the iconography is also going to
be in harmony with other aspects of liturgy like when we look at hymnography there's particular
ways that our hymns use symbolism and metaphor that give the Coptic church its particular
let's call it a spiritual flavor character yeah the iconography needs to use symbolism
and metaphor in a way that fits with the hymns that you're going to be listening to and in
a way that fits with the trajectory and singing hopefully yes yeah yeah exactly and in a way
that fits with the particular trajectory of Coptic liturgy you know like our Coptic right
as one of you know many orthodox rites has its unique character that makes it distinct
from let's say Syriac rites which has its own character and that unity and diversity
is a beautiful thing which is why right and wrong yeah kind of like you know this icon's
right this icon's wrong like these are kind of absolutist terms that are not very helpful
they don't fit into this conversation very well yeah one of the other elements that I
think is really important is the idea of programming and programming is basically the way that
icons are arranged in a space the way that the icons are made as part of the space the
architecture whatever so it's not just random icons placed you know wherever and just depending
I guess on who's doing the painting and who's making the decisions and I like this icon
I like the saint so I put the saint there or I like you know this the this icon and
this composition so I want it there somewhere it's all meant to actually be a program and
work together yeah the icons function not just by communicating by themselves so we
have a tendency to think about icon theology as you know looking at this one icon as a
standalone piece and looking at all the different symbols that exist within a particular icon
but I think that a lot of how icons communicate within a church dare I say the majority is
actually how they're arranged within the space so for example if you go to the monastery
of Saint Anthony in the Red Sea in Egypt you're gonna find in the sanctuary above the altar
there's an image of the sacrifice of Isaac and it's being placed above the altar to
show that the sacrifice that Abraham made by sacrificing his only son was pointing to
the ultimate and true sacrifice which was the sacrifice of Christ on the cross which
we partake of in the Eucharist right so it means something not just that this icon is
painted in a certain way but where the icon is placed and you get all sorts of examples
like this if maybe your listeners want to dig in further the recently discovered dome
of the Deir Eisr-e-Yen yes above the altar yeah it's got four scenes arranged in the
shape of a cross and these are four apocalyptic scenes scenes of Christ in glory and all of
them seem to be pointing to this you know meeting of God in his glory and his divinity
on a mountain so you've got the ascension and the transfiguration and the visions of
of Isaiah and Ezekiel on one side and then Christ as the ancient of days on the other
side with Daniel if you want to see like programming on steroids of course in that scene Christ
is depicted as the ancient of days with white hair and Daniel is pointing at him and right
below the ancient of days you have the scene of Melchizedek and Abraham and Melchizedek
is presented below the ancient of days as you know the priest forever who has no history
and no lineage you know and he's offering bread and wine to Abraham so Abraham is partaking
from this ancient of days old man character who is there in the dome and I think the key
to all of this is that these programs follow a very similar logic to our lectionary so
if you look at the way that our readings are arranged you really see this during Basra
during Holy Week the way that readings will be put next to each other so you've got you
know a prophecy and then a psalm and a gospel and it's put together in a way that shows
you that this is all one story this is all a single story that we're coming and becoming
a part of and it makes that story present right the iconography works the same way by
putting all these different images next to each other it shows you through those patterns
that it was all really you know one story from the start that's amazing it's not just
a random selection or random placement it's a program yeah it's meant to connect all of
these things that's beautiful and it kind of leads me to a question they should have
asked earlier which is your studies at OCAD focused more on you know the illustration
say the technical aspect of iconography what led you to take more studies and specifically
theological studies and did that contribute how did that contribute to you becoming an
iconographer?
I was working on a project for a church in Australia in Sydney it was a set of processional
icons and it was a I realized it was a pretty big project because it was going to be processional
icons for all the feasts of the church year so the major and minor feasts and the feasts
of the the saints of the parish the weeks of Lent the icons that are related to Holy
Week so I thought okay this is a unique project that is going to allow me to look at the iconography
of the feasts in Coptic tradition in general and I chatted about it with a couple of different
people and different people encouraged me to basically treat it as a thesis you know
that this could be a really great you know maybe book project or something like that
and at the time there was a program in the diocese called OPF Orthodox Pillars of Faith
and that program was basically for university students where there would be a couple of
weekends throughout the summer where we would have a guest speaker who's an expert in their
topic and we would basically take a course throughout the summer over those weekends
so we had had a course with Dr. Joseph Feltas and Dr. Joseph really inspired us and opened
our minds to the beauty of the patristic tradition and seeing the way that he taught and was
digging into all of this purely out of love for Christ and his church that was really
inspiring so when this thought came of potentially you know taking the research that I was already
doing and you know turning it into more formal theological studies I spoke to Dr. Joseph
as well and he encouraged me and I had some other friends who had gone ahead of me in
the program at Trinity College so which you did that program as well so you and I talked
at the time a little bit as well and I entered the program and the rest is history and it's
a great program and Father Jeffrey Reddy who is the head of the program he's a priest in
the OCA he's been a fantastic mentor and the opportunity to study with all different kinds
of Orthodox Christians has been really helpful I think because it's opened my mind to see
a lot of beautiful things in other traditions but also to see what the challenges are in
other traditions which has made me in some ways also really love the Coptic Church because
you know when you see like we have our challenges and we work through those and there's also
a lot of things that the Coptic Church does really well and beautifully and so when you're
with all these other traditions it allows you to see the richness of your own tradition
through their eyes as well yeah yeah because you don't you don't notice the air that you
breathe yes so that's it's been really a wonderful experience that's amazing and obviously these
studies have contributed a lot to the formation of you as an iconographer because it wasn't
just about getting the technical aspects of the icon right it's about that deeper understanding
of what an icon is how it functions how it fits in that larger liturgical setting of
the church right yeah and so you took all of this and then you know your your inspiration
goes back you know centuries like you're you find inspiration in in the ancient Coptic
tradition you mentioned you know the dome of the monastery of the syrians and the syrians
and looking back at tradition what else inspires you where else do you find inspiration
so when i started the program at Trinity College i mentioned earlier the late professor Richard
Schneider yes and my father of confession when i was entering the program he knew he
knew professor professor Schneider and he told me look he's he's getting a bit old so
you know enter the program quickly so that you can catch his iconology class and sure
enough i ended up taking the last iconology course that was the last one he thought that
that professor Schneider taught before he passed away so i was fortunate enough to catch
him and you're talking about inspiration from other traditions and i think professor Schneider
played a big role in that for me because he kind of would spend the beginning of the class
in the first couple of weeks of the course he basically spent them tearing down everything
you think you know about iconography so that he can then start completely from scratch
right and in his class he revealed a kind of universality to the tradition of christian
art and the way that iconography works that really opened up my mind to looking at other
traditions i think i move in i have like little phases so i think my most recent phase of
you know another tradition that i've been really interested in has been the romanesque
and when we say the romanesque we're talking about christian art in like late antiquity
no not late antiquity i'm like 12th to 14th century italy and spain okay and there's a
bit of it in france as well so just before just before the gothic which would then be
followed by the renaissance and a lot of the ways in which the romanesque painters were
working with a focus on you know a flatness of the picture plane and it's focused on line
and pattern rather than on creating depth and things like that i feel like that's very
much in tune with the way the cops were working and a lot of the ways they treat the themes
are also very similar so when we talk about programming and professor schnider used to
say that it's the program that makes a church orthodox actually uh because that's where
that's really where all the theology is the way they use certain themes is very much in
tune with what the cops were up to across the mediterranean i think also like early
byzantine art um gakaroman painting yeah all these all these different traditions there's
probably more than i'm that i'm missing and by the way when you look at uh coptic art
throughout history it's very clear that the cops were always being inspired by the cultures
that were surrounding them as well you know if you go to dennis orian after all the you
know the great restoration work has been done and all that stuff there's a particularly
greco-roman flair right to it which isn't present in the monastery of saint anthony
for example which gets painted um in the 13th century during the time of the ayubids right
and the the ayubid culture at the time you know um with like with everything you know
all the visual culture of the islamic world is present in the iconography of of the monastery
of saint anthony and that's not something to be embarrassed about like the cops are
always speaking the cops are always preaching christ in the visual language of their time
right would you like i would say like they're not in isolation they're in conversation no
always yeah always yeah um we just had the the symposium of the annual symposium of the
canadian society of caustic studies and dr carl eneme who is in charge of the restoration
work at der suryen uh he gave a fantastic paper showing that the the coptic and syriac
communities that lived side by side in der suryen in the 10th century when this dome
was created worked together to create a program in that dome that would work both for coptic
and syriac liturgy wow yeah so this collaboration between different traditions is is not a new
thing um it was always it was always there and anybody who looks at the masterpieces
of coptic tradition carefully is going to see that that's the case so if these icons
almost are in conversation or a sort of reflection of the time that they were created what do
modern icons modern coptic icons um say about the time we're living in and especially in
the light of um dr saha fanous and his uh revival and how has that kind of played into
your work yeah so dr isaac fanous was a big believer in iconography being a constantly
renewing thing he himself was influenced by people like picasso and matisse and he would
say that you know the the the work that the modern artists were doing um like cubism which
is basically painting in such a way that deconstructs the object so that you see it from you know
multiple different perspectives at the same time um which which picasso is famous for
um and the emphasis on line and the flatness of the picture plane fanous would say that
all of these visual elements were already present in the art of ancient egypt and for
him that was really convenient because he was also working in a time of great nationalism
in egypt so fanous said that his goal was to create a kind of purely egyptian form of
iconography and that makes sense for his time right um so you've got you know egyptian nationalism
in the years of abdel nasser um middle of 20th century yeah and you've got also all
of this modern art that he's being influenced by and then you've also got um other modern
artists working in egypt at the time um architects like ramsi swisa wasif uh and artists like
uh and margaret nekla um to name to name just a few uh that whole atmosphere gave us what
we know now as isaac fanous so that was you know he was working from or doing icons at
least from the 1970s all the way up into the early 2000s so he had a long career and even
during that career um isaac fanous in the 70s is not isaac fanous in the 80s and it's
not he's not isaac fanous in the 90s or in the 2000s you can definitely see a development
in his work yeah yeah there's a huge progression in the work that he's doing so like we think
of things as like oh there's coptic art you know a long time ago and that was one thing
and there is coptic art now which is another thing right as sort of these static ideas
and static styles yeah yeah but we can see that even within the life of a great iconographer
like isaac fanous there is development as well that's going on within the span of the
40 years in which he was painting churches you know so it gets really specific right
like sometimes there's like sometimes there's concerns in the culture or in the society
or in the church even that iconography is responding to you know and there's all this
scholarship for example about how you know iconography of the virgin mary really developed
when there was controversies about christ's humanity and all this kind of stuff so the
iconography like the theology of the church is always responding and in dialogue with
whatever is going on during that time that's right and there's suryan has a famous icon
for that of the nursing the nursing virgin that's right yeah isaac fanous never painted
the nursing virgin and today there's some iconographers who are wanting to go back to
such a theme so there's also a question of what old themes can be repurposed for today's
society you know a theme like the nursing virgin you know this icon of of womanhood
has so much to say in a society today that is having all kinds of you know debates about
gender and sexuality and all this kind of stuff right and it comes in you know with
it comes in with the voice of saint paul saying you know i beseech you therefore that you
present your bodies as a living sacrifice right the virgin mary as a model for all human
beings offers her body as a sacrifice to god you know it's a complete paradigm shift right
that's not that's probably not what the icon was made for back in the day you know when
when the when this imagery developed in like the fifth or sixth century right right but
today bringing back some of these you know older themes that haven't been in much use
can actually contribute to a modern conversation right it seems to me like the modern question
that iconography is going to be responding to now is basically the fact that we're completely
inundated with images in our day-to-day life and this constant influx of this constant
bombardment of images through our phones through our screens in general and the visual media
in generalness yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a lot of noise yes and the icon as a as a competing
image is going to be in in orthodox churches what what brings us back to silence and what
and what brings us back to to silence and stillness yeah yeah to to to getting away
from the the rat race and the the this like content creation that's culture and to just
sit before you know the the still small voice you know this this reality of the kingdom
of god that's right we we were bombarded with you know with memes and everything is
memeified but the icon challenges that it stands in stark contrast to that and saying
no that's not what it is that's not what life is not what reality is and it leads us deeper
into that reality and and of course with iconography being in conversation with the society it
exists in the question is what role does digital media and illustrations play in that and how
does it enter intersect with iconography like the work of like mean on tune or the work
of michael gamel with creative orthodox yeah and the line becomes you know increasingly
blurry between you know digital media and iconography and and even you know that the
making of the process is almost indistinguishable yeah you cited two fantastic examples because
i think uh mean anton and michael gamel of creative orthodox i think they're both giving
illustration exactly the right place that it needs within the church i think all these
things sort of exist in a hierarchy you know like you have your iconography in a beautiful
cathedral and then you have your you know smaller icons at home your your illustrations
for liturgical books your illustrations like what you mentioned with with me nantana and
michael gamel like those all are like those are all needed you know it's just like how
like in music you know you have like your big melismatic you know pick a throne on on
good friday and all these all these great magnificent hymns and then you have like your
your easy to chant you know uh like solis and things like that that are much easier
still in the liturgical realm right and then you have like your i don't i don't want to
speak outside of my field but like you you know you have then like your your melodies
and like like madaya and things like that more folk um types of things and then you
have like your songs that you sing in sunday school so you're saying like they play different
roles from functions yeah but they all they all fit in a hierarchy right you know like
the the little pictures that you receive in in sunday school are not to be confused with
a beautifully decorated apps in a in in a in a large church you know they serve different
functions but the climax of all of that work is the the liturgical worship of the church
right you know that's what brings it all together ties it together yeah and then all this digital
media and illustration and stuff like that is kind of subordinate to that it's leading
viewers to that you know ultimate liturgical moment if you look at michael's work creative
orthodox it reaches people in very unique ways that you might not get with the iconography
of a church because it's also these little animated videos and things like that retelling
the stories of the church of the excuse me of the desert fathers right you don't get
that in church right but these stories are there so that you can go and taste it for
yourself through the life of the church and of the of the community right you know the
comic books as well so all of this all of this has a role but i think the the crux of
the issue here is to know what the hierarchy is so that everything is kind of in its proper
place right because when you get people when you get people you know taking the thing that
you know should have been on a t-shirt for a convention and you know putting that in
church it's like well no there's nothing wrong with you know a particular kind of art or
style or anything like that but its place is not in liturgy i see what you mean does
that make sense yeah and you know the idea of having illustration out like the illumination
of sacred texts of scripture like there is you know christians have been doing that for
centuries you know taking the scripture taking uh liturgical books and you know illuminating
them drawing yeah and calligraphy and all sorts of things and all of these things have
their place of course and the question is always how do all these things function together
and speaking of functioning together how does one go about programming a church i mean it's
easy to talk about how the end result works but the process of starting from a blank slate
so i want to talk about the project you recently did in melbourne saint john krasostom's church
yeah and the structure of the church the architecture of the church itself is unique and to add
to the complexity it's not symmetric so i mean how does that all fit into the process
of creating a program that works yeah so that church it was really unique and by the way
i'm very glad that you didn't catch any of the australian accent we were all worried
over here that you're going to come back and you're going to be speaking australian and
we're gonna have to reprogram you but we're thankful thank god that this didn't have to
happen yes we were worried the azis they tried they really tried i'm sure they did i'm sure
you know what it is it's like when i would attend tazbihah with them like singing together
really forces you to because the accent affects like of course how how you sing and stuff
and how so you find yourself accidentally yeah anyway of course of course that's absolutely
true yeah anyway um so saint john so yeah if any of the if any of my friends in melbourne
are listening to this i'm sorry um so this uh this parish of saint mary's is the oldest
uh coptic church in melbourne the oldest okay yeah and so i think in the 1970s or something
like that um the copts purchased an old red brick anglican church um in the neighborhood
of in the suburb of kensington and it's a very old suburb like it's all these you know
like victorian houses um and old shops and things like that and the church like the original
church of saint mary is at the top of the hill so there's like the main street with
all the shops and then it goes up this hill and then you always see from anywhere in the
neighborhood at the top of the hill there's this church um so it's really a part of the
architecture of the neighborhood and when when they wanted to expand and add a new building
they they basically had to um like hire these you know really uh like high level architects
um you know so they hired uh bright studios sorry i think it's called studio brights um
so they worked with studio brights and um basically when they were designing the building
studio bright didn't want to take away from um the original saint mary's as this church
at the top of the hill so what they did is that they basically had the the the building
the new building kind of on an incline that's opposing the incline of the roof of the old
building so the two buildings together create kind of like a zigzag shape oh wow okay yeah
the new building is also like a gray concrete from the outside yes you see that yeah yeah
from the exterior so the new building is also made of this like gray concrete so it kind
of blends with the sky so the red brick church still stands out that slanted roof that they
created from the inside gives you a very odd looking church building and so you enter the
church and it's a it's a it's a long sort of rectangular church but the roof is on on
the like if you're looking at the sanctuary on the north side so the men's side yeah um
it's about six meters tall okay um while on the south side the height of the ceiling is
about three meters tall and then the whole thing is on a flat incline yeah the the lower
side of the building is as high as the iconostasis goes so that means that on the other side there's
a section of the building that rises quite high up above three meters above yeah above
the iconostasis where on the other side of the building the iconostasis basically hits
the the almost hits the ceiling and there's a large there's a big arch in between um and
by the time this podcast is out i will have posted photos of all of this so
you can go to our website and check it out and what the website is um kcaledda.com kcaledda.com
yeah um so
when you're looking at a building usually the highest point of the building becomes
the focal points right in this case the highest point of the building is way off to the side
not in the middle not in the sanctuary so it kind of created the second focal point
you've got the archway of the door and then you've got this focal point off to the side
so then the question is point in the building yes in the corner yes exactly
so then the question became
what iconography would we put off to the side like that that we would be happy to have as
a focal point number two so that had to be very intentional now thankfully the higher side
ended up being the north side which is the side on which the virgin mary is usually placed
so that allowed me to paint that were the theotocuses yes yeah yeah that that allowed me to
put saint mary up in that corner as the burning bush and this is where architecture can dictate
the iconography in really interesting ways um the roof of the church the sorry the ceiling of the
church gets higher and higher as you move from the back towards the sanctuary so it goes up inward
as well so there's an ascent that's happening in this building towards the sanctuary yeah
so the burning bush in addition to the slant in the roof yes from one side to the other
south to north yes and then it's also from west to east exactly yeah um so it became really
convenient to have the burning bush and then in this movement of ascent moses ascending the mountain
and taking off his shoes as he goes towards the virgin mary in the burning bush beautiful and he's
untying his shoes in the icon the way that people are taking off their shoes to move towards the
sanctuary to receive communion if there's anybody listening who isn't coptic orthodox
coptic people like take off their shoes before going up to receive communion anyway
and it's usually explained as moses removing his shoes to go and stand on holy ground so
and this is part of the unique kind of coptic voice right in iconography right these these unique
traditions that make um that make the coptic church unique and beautiful they reflect them
the iconography as well of course wow so he's going up towards the sanctuary towards the virgin
mary and then the main image in the sanctuary is the communion of the apostles and we have examples
of the communion of the apostles in coptic tradition as far back as the sixth century
the particular sites where it's used as the main image in the sanctuary are
um bawit and the monastery of wedi sarga both in upper egypt if anybody's interested
sorry the the monastery of abba thomas in wedi sarga i hope i got that right anyway um
so we know that the cops used this as at some point um as the image for the sanctuary
um as this the image for the sanctuary um christ is standing at the altar
um as the celebrant and he's offering the bread and wine to his disciples who are in line on both
sides um to partake of the eucharist and this is not an image of the last supper this is different
from the last supper yeah this is this is uh a heavenly scene it's a heavenly liturgy um
um you know it's it's the liturgy of the life of the age to come where all of us are you know
in communion together in christ um that that i chose because of also that slant and the roof
because you know to have like a christ enthroned like you typically would and then to have something
go higher above that i thought that would be a bit odd right you know because there's an understanding
of it being like this heavenly scene whereas communion has this kind of um this horizontal
aspect to it that you know it it it emphasizes more christ's coming down to us you know like
we say in the salih like by the care of your goodness the heavens were lowered right so it
kind of fits more into that idea so it seemed to work a little bit better and it's what our lord
says in luke chapter 22 verse 16 for i tell you i will not eat it again until it finds uh fulfillment
uh in the kingdom of god this is apologize this is the niv here's the n is if i say i shall not eat
it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of god so it's all about that for taste of the kingdom
and fulfillment are leading us towards that yeah yeah um the other side from the burning bush
which is the south side uh there's a small icon of
isaiah receiving the call from the chair so now you've got these two old testament scenes
of the burning bush and isaiah and the chair giving him the call when he saw the vision of
the throne of god in isaiah chapter six i think um so now you've got these two scenes of in which
prophets are being called to go out and proclaim the word of god into the world
into the world
and the call gets used as an image of the eucharist um pointing to you know the humanity
and divinity being united together just as the coal and the fire become completely united or
saint sero uses the image of a piece of iron so it's alexandria yeah so it's playing into
all that kind of imagery which is the same kind of imagery as the the fire in the the burning bush
right you know um whether it's interpreted as christ's humanity and divinity or the mother of
god you know carrying christ in her womb this idea that something you know earthly um is is burning
with divinity um appears in like on both sides right you know pointing to the the eucharist
and next to isaiah there is john the baptist and that's so isaiah and john the baptist are not
really visible behind that kind of status that kind of status by the way was um
was the icons of that kind of status were created by fady mchale who i mentioned earlier
my good friend and mentor um from uk coptic icons
and so one of the icons he did for the iconostasis was the theophany so behind the theophany inside
the sanctuary there's an icon of john the baptist standing alone holding a disc that has the lamb
and he's pointing at it so it's john the baptist showing to us the lamb of god
and there's a stained glass window created by asha fe in the same church
in the sanctuary next to the burning bush with the lamb of god an image of lamb of god at the top
and i put an angel next to that window with a scroll saying he took what is ours and gave us
what is his beautiful so that that statement from tasbihah kind of ties all of those different
themes and patterns together um and then we ended up doing an image of the resurrection outside
in the chorus with christ and by the way as you as you're speaking i'm looking at images yeah yeah
yeah that's so so that's a combination of the two scenes of the resurrection that usually get
combined by the the copts in iconography at least from from the evidence when i talk about all of
this like old iconography and looking at that and looking at that as our visual tradition
we have to understand that the majority of the things that existed did not survive
so when we're looking at all of this art history and archaeology we have to understand that
we can only work with what we have access to right and that what we have access to is a very small
portion of you know what what has to have been you know a very vibrant um you know artistic and
iconographic tradition so it's the scene of the resurrection of christ meeting the two marys from
the gospel according to saint matthew and the myrrh bearing women at the tomb with the angel
from the gospel according to saint mark and those two scenes get combined and we see examples of
this in the monastery of saint mccarius and the monastery of saint anthony and the
monastery of saint anthony from the 11th and 15th centuries respectively yeah
i could i could give more details about you know the way the apostles are depicted and things like
that um but i don't know if should we keep going yeah yeah of course absolutely okay um
um while i was painting and this is this is the kind of thing that appears in uh programming um
you know like not everything is figured out in advance there are things that happen
while you're working things that reveal themselves to you um and i don't think that's mystical i
think that's just like the pragmatic the process the process of theology the process of
you know doing theology visually is about putting these images together
to show that they all reveal christ so that we can then go out into the world and having been
trained to see christ in all these different stories to be able to see christ in all of
human life in all of existence having trained our eyes in liturgy to see properly um
so while i was painting saint john the beloved in the communion of the apostles
it occurred to me that you know there's there's two ways that you can paint saint john
you have saint john as a young man uh and that's kind of mostly how he's depicted in coptic tradition
that's right as a young man um or there's saint john the elder you know and uh one of the concerns
about this theme because it's a theme that people um have not seen in churches in something like
i don't know 12 centuries um so people aren't used to it one of the concerns was how do we make sure
that people know that this is not the last supper so i called one of the priests um and i said i
want to you know what what do you think do we make saint john younger old and he said okay well
you know what do both options entail and i explained um and then i realized that he was on the side
that is facing the stained glass of the lamb of god okay so now we have john the elder
who is you know john from revelation um looking up towards the lamb of god and the rest of the window
has like these towers symbolizing the seven churches oh so the yeah so that window um by
by by iconographer asher fake um is an image of the revelation scene and saint john is looking at it
and in the beginning of the book of revelation his preface to you know what's the context in
which he sees all these visions it's i was in the spirit on the lord's day yes you know
the lord's day yeah he's he's there in the spirit on the lord's day that's exactly what's going on
exactly you know and so now the iconography is responding to the stained glass as well
and all of this kind of happened was developing through the process it was something pre-planned
yes yeah yeah it's it's a process of contemplation as you're trying to craft these images
things start to make more and more sense and by the way like like i didn't put saint john the
beloved there on that side on purpose you know like that's usually saint peter and saint john
are the first on each side and they're usually on the same side because saint john is on that side
saint john tends to be on that side uh on in the icon of the crucifixion as well right so the virgin
mary and christ and saint john the beloved are on the same sides that you would usually get them
in a crucifixion icon but now they're in the communion right um and so all of these patterns
kind of have a consistency that makes all of these theological links possible absolutely and it emerges
throughout the process because this process is not just a matter of putting paint on on drywall
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