Prince Albert, Saskatchewan

Father Ivan Nahachewsky is the parish priest at St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church in Prince Albert, SK. Many years ago, he attended icon-writing classes taught by Father Damien from the Mt. Taber Monastery in Redwood, California. He remembers a 10-hour session where students just watched so that they could learning the intricate steps of icon-writing. When Ivan first tried to write an icon himself, he was disappointed with the results. He decided that he did not have the talent for this work and so he abandoned the many boards that he had prepared for the icon-writing that he had hoped to do. He felt intimidated by what he thought was his lack of talent and so he let the prepared boards just sit there for 20 years. Then inspiration came – or perhaps a call – and he just felt that he needed to write icons on the boards prepared long ago. He got videos of Fr. Damien from the Sheptytsky Institute in Toronto working on icons. After watching the videos, he spent 8 hours a day, day after day, working on icons for a whole year. This was 27 years ago at the time of the interview (2013). Today Father Ivan continues to write, bless, and give away his icons. He also holds iconography workshops in the church basement. One type of workshop takes the participants through the creation of an icon step-by-step. All participants work at the same pace and each one creates his or her version of the same icon. The second type of workshop is for more advanced icon writers. They meet regularly to pray together and each person works a unique icon at his or her own pace.

Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan has a talented painter as one of its members and she has produced some striking, modern icons. The talented painter is Karen Isbister, a woman who is part First Nations and part German. She joined the Holy Trinity church along with her husband. Karen loves art and fell in love with her new church. Because of this, she is preparing to become Orthodox one day.

Father Michael Lomaskiewicz, the church pastor, educated Karen in the art of icon writing. Because she does not know Ukrainian culture or the Cyrillic alphabet, Father Lomaskiewicz assists her as she writes. Karen started with a small icon of the Mother of God and then went on to do more and more, producing bigger and bigger pieces. To make icons, Karen works on canvas mounted on plywood. She has also done the lettering on the walls inside the church. The lettering was a more complicated project than the icons because it could not be painted and then mounted; it needed to be painted directly on the walls. For this, the church mounted scaffolding and Karen stood on that as she worked.