When Meltem Aktas arrived in the United States 14 years ago, she brought with her a fascination with the Orthodox and Eastern-rite icons she saw in her native Turkey, and the desire to bring the sacred art form to Western audiences.

After studying more icons, as well as Flemish and early Renaissance styles of painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, the artist brings together East and West in a series of icons she is creating for St. Barnabas Church in Beverly.

The five American saints, and Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, will stand nearly life-size in an open shrine at the rear of the contemporary worship space. So far, the icons of Tekakwitha, St. Isaac Jogues, St. Katherine Drexel and St. Elizabeth Seton have been installed. St. Francis Cabrini will join them Feb. 20, followed later this spring by St. Martin de Porres.

Unlike traditional icons, the paintings are lifelike, with a three-dimensional quality, not elongated and severe, Aktas said. But they were painted using traditional techniques and materials, with each wooden panel coated with 50 to 60 layers of paint and gold leaf—which recalls the gift of the magi and symbolizes the heavenly world. And like more traditional icons, at least one of the subjects in each painting makes eye contact with the viewer, inviting people to make a spiritual connection.

“They’re supposed to take you on a journey within, wherever you may be, wherever you are at,” Aktas said on a recent visit to the church. “When I’m painting, I’m praying that they will be companions to people, that people will feel attracted to them. … They’re a window to a connection with God, a window to the unseen in your life.”

If the icons offer those who see them an opportunity to pray; for the artist, their very existence is a prayer, Aktas said.

“As in traditional iconography, we are tools, we are messengers,” she said. “There are gifts god has given each one of us. Mine is expressing myself, and what I pray for, through my hands.”

Leaders at St. Barnabas hope the icons will offer parishioners a new window to their faith, a window with a New World view.

Pastor Father Raymond Tillrock said parishioners came up with the idea as they prepared for Sharing Christ’s Gifts, the Millennium Campaign that asks all archdiocesan parishes to generate at least their ordinary annual income in a capital campaign, with 20 percent going to archdiocesan projects and the rest staying in the parishes. St. Barnabas had some pressing facilities needs—replacing its school windows and repaving its parking lot—that were met with the $1.3 million the parish raised, but leaders also wanted to enhance the faith community’s spiritual life.

“There was no real devotional area in the church,” Tillrock said, looking around the large, contemporary-style worship area in a 1968-vintage church. “Of all the projects, this is the one that caught people’s energy.”

“It’s amazing how much warmth this adds to this space,” said pastoral associate Richard Rajo, who brought the artist and parish together after seeing Aktas’ icon of Mary Seat of Wisdom at St. Joseph College Seminary at Loyola University.

After discussing the project, Aktas and parish leaders decided a more contemporary style would suit not only the environment in the church, but also the subject matter.

“Most icons are meant to be otherworldly,” Aktas said. “These icons are saints, human like you and me. They lived in this world at one time.”

Aktas, 38, said the only one of the six she knew much about before starting the project a year and a half ago was Mother Cabrini—“I have a dear friend who has a real devotion to her, and she gave me a prayer card that I have in my purse,” Aktas said—so she started by researching their lives in libraries and books, especially looking at any portraits created during their lives.

But her paintings are icons, not portraits, so the most important goal was to be true to the meaning of their spiritual lives and teachings, not their physical looks. Some Chicagoans can look at the portraits and see parts of themselves: Aktas used an employee of a local FedEx office as the model for Tekakwitha, and students from a Rogers Park public school for the children with Drexel and Seton.

Barb Majeski, a member of the parish art and environment committee, said that once the installation is complete, the parish will add devotional candles and prayer cards with information about the saints’ lives. She hopes young people will make special use of it, especially since Aktas portrayed all of them as young adults, in the prime of their lives.

“We knew all the Old World saints,” like St. Barnabas himself,” Majeski said. “I’m hoping the young people can identify with these.”

For Tillrock, it helps that the saints come from varying cultural backgrounds and have varying stories: missionary Isaac Jogues, Native American Tekakwitha, Italian immigrant Cabrini, native-born educators Seton and Drexel.

“We wanted to have people that would form a link across the continent,” Tillrock said. “And a couple of them have links to Chicago.”

Drexel visited the city when her sisters came to teach at St. Monica, the city’s first African-American parish, and Cabrini lived in Chicago and has her shrine here.

“These icons are teaching instruments, like the windows at (the cathedral in) Chartres,” Tillrock said.

“These people serve as signs of hope,” Rajo said. “They are a great cloud of witnesses. They were people like us, who struggled like us. They show us that this is all part of what we are as Christians, as part of our baptismal call.”

 

The icon of St. Francis Cabrini will be installed as part of an evening prayer service at 7 p.m. Feb. 20 at St. Barnabas Church, 102nd Street and Longwood Avenue. Sister Bernadette Anello, a member of the congregation founded my Mother Cabrini, will speak about her life. To learn more about Aktas’ work, call her Rogers Park studio, Imago Sacred Art, at (773) 274-7490 or visit www.imagoicons.com.

Top

---