The Board of Directors of ECVA would like to announce our next Call to Artists for our upcoming exhibition, Layers of Hope, which will be curated by ECVA artist, Suzanne Schleck. Submissions will be open on February 29 and will close on April 7 (see submissions guidelines). We ask that you submit your artist bio in pdf format. If you are interested in selling your work, you may include your website and contact information so possible clients may contact you. The exhibition will be published online just before Pentecost so everyone can see the work and the many layers of talent that contribute to the spirit of our ECVA Artist community.

The guidelines for submissions: https://ecva.org/howtoexhibit.html

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
minding, the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In it’s own way turns into life.
John O’Donohue

When I was applying for a grant for artist/educators some years ago, I compared both teaching and my painting of icons to gardening. All three involve ordering the chaos. What isdrawing but the ordering of the chaos of a blank page, or teaching the maintenance of order so learning can happen, or planting the tall tomatoes behind the shorter basil so they can both grow. All also begin in darkness and hope. As I often tell my icon painting classes, you can’t achieve depth in your painting if you don’t begin with dark enough dark tones. All the pieces are necessary to make a whole. And we always remember that each step in the painting, as in teaching and gardening, is preparation for the next. That all sounds very Lenten, and ultimately hopeful.

This led me to think about community, and a quote from Seonaid Robertson’s book Craft and Contemporary Culture, that the tradition of the crafts “enshrines the knowledge and the satisfactions of generations of a community. It is ‘more than one man deep.’” I believe that all that we do in the arts is “more than one man deep”, and that each piece of art we contribute is built upon layers both dark and light of what came before. I think that our contributions are built upon the lessons of our own teachers, and as expressions of that teaching we help build up our community, grateful for the knowledge that in that sharing we join past, present and what is to come. Each layer is preparation for the next.

So let us share how our art brings hope to a sometimes dark and chaotic world, and how our art expresses and contributes to the building of community.

Suzanne Schleck


SUZANNE SCHLECK

Suzanne Schleck is a retired public school art teacher who was born and raised in Missouri, and has resided in New Jersey for over 50 years. In 1989 I experienced a call to paint icons, and began studying icon painting using egg tempera and gold leaf with the Rev. John Walsted, continuing until his death in 2014. I have taken additional painting workshops with Robert Lentz, the Prosopon School, Fred Wessel, Peter Pearson and the Hexameron school, and my work has been published in Episcopal Life and online with the Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts. My icons can also be seen locally at Christ Episcopal Church in Toms River, as well as in churches throughout the country. I recently completed four icons of local saints for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, NC as a part of its Becoming Beloved Community program, and competed five icons for a series of Anglo-catholic saints which were commissioned by the Rev. Robert Gallagher and now reside at St. Clements Episcopal Church in Seattle, WA. I have taught the egg tempera icon conference at Kanuga Conferences in Hendersonville, NC since 2005, at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Richmond, VA since 2011, as well as workshops at Trinity Church, Wall Street in NYC, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, CT, the Gray Center in Canton, MS, and my own parish, Christ Church in Toms River. I have enjoyed living on the edge of the Pine Barrens, in Whiting, NJ, with my husband George and our two children since 1976.


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