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Sr. Anne Joseph of the Sisters of Mary Morning Star in Monona works on an Icon of the Madonna and Child.
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MONONA — “When you find something that you really love to do, and you’re passionate about it, it changes everything,” said Sr. Anne Joseph from the Sisters of Mary Morning Star in Monona.
She was speaking about her recent involvement in the practice of “writing” icons, an ancient Christian art form that dates back to the earliest centuries of Christian history.
These pieces of art, known for their non-realistic, heavily symbolic, and copied imagery (writing an icon is more often a process of carefully repainting a pre-existing image with much tradition and history behind it), were not something Sister Anne said she fully appreciated when she first dabbled in the art form in high school. Back in about 2005, she took a class in iconography through the Institute of St. Joseph in Boyd, Wis.
“I wasn’t originally attracted to them,” she said. “But I was kind of an artist.”
She said that it was more of her dad who really loved icons. “At the time, I wanted to do more realistic paintings.”
But she says she believes her 11 years at the Sisters of Mary Morning Star convent prepared her to develop a better appreciation for the practice of writing and praying with icons.
A new opportunity
It was early March of this year, just before the world was turned upside down with the coronavirus, that Sister Anne was given the second opportunity in her life to get involved in iconography.
Drazen Dupor, who has been teaching iconography in the Madison area since 2003, was offering a three-session class at Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish in Monona.
Sister Anne saw the advertisement and was interested, but due to the cost of the class, she thought it best not to ask her prioress for permission to take the class.
“So, what happened was quite providential,” she said. “My prioress asked me and another Sister if we wanted to do this icon class, and I said, ‘Yes!’ Like you don’t even know that I actually do icons. So we did the class, and I really loved it.”
