Feb. 15, 2010 issue
EMU professor learns Lithuania’s iconic art
By Kate Elizabeth Queram Daily News-RecordPage:
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HARRISONBURG, Va. — Last year, Jerry Holsopple spent his days teaching in the visual and communication arts department at Eastern Mennonite University.
Jerry Holsopple is captured on a photo expedition by one of his students at LCC International University. — Photo provided by EMU
These days, he’s still teaching, but he’s doing it at LCC International University in Lithuania.
Holsopple, 52, is in Lithuania for the duration of the 2009-10 school year on a Fulbright scholarship, a grant that allows academics to engage in global intellectual pursuits.
He’s based at LCC International University, where he teaches photography, film and culture and religious art classes.
“I chose Lithuania since I have brought EMU students here for six-week experiences and really enjoy the students here,” Holsopple said via e-mail. “I also wanted to study [religious] icon painting and connected on a previous trip with a Russian Orthodox priest who agreed to teach me.”
Holsopple first became fascinated with icons — broadly defined as religious works of art — on a trip to Bulgaria in the 1990s.
“I visited several churches and a large gallery, which was where many were put in these countries during the Soviet era, and became fascinated by them,” he said.
Rather than learning about icon painting from a book, Holsopple wanted to try it firsthand. He studies with the priest who had agreed to teach him. The priest speaks Russian and Lithuanian, so Holsopple takes students along to translate.
“The conversations are about more than icons, [they’re] about life and the way we approach our work,” Holsopple said.
The duo have plenty of opportunity for conversation, because the icon-painting process is lengthy. It begins by roughing the surface of a quarter-sawn piece of wood and then applying coats of gelatin and water mixtures.
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