Healing Biodiversity Through Imagination, Contemplation and Action
With artist & iconographer Angela Manno
November 16, 2024, 9:30 a.m. – 3 p.m.
$115 includes lunch and a catalog of Angela’s series,
“Contemporary Icons of Threatened and Endangered Species”
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About this Offering
Healing Biodiversity Through Imagination, Contemplation and Action is a new onsite day-program in
which we will explore the sacred aspect of biodiversity and our role in preventing biodiversity collapse.
Though most of us are familiar with Lectio Divina (reading, meditating, praying and contemplating scripture) we are less familiar with Visio Divina, the use of imagery as the focus of contemplation. This is common practice in the Eastern Orthodox Church where icons are an integral part of the Liturgy and are used as a focus for prayer in private life.
Icons (Greek for image) are considered “Windows to the Divine.” We will use Angela’s icons of threatened and endangered species on exhibit in the Mary C. Daly RSM Art Gallery (November 3 – December 15) to reveal a more complete image of the Divine, one in which all of Creation is in the image of the Creator, not just humans. We will focus on the icons contemplatively, to stir our empathy and imaginations and explore and commit to actions to stop the collapse of biodiversity.
Through practices including Visio Divina, “worship sharing” (from the Quaker tradition) and guided meditation, we will also consider where we are in human history and ways to approach the Impasse and Dark Night we find ourselves in as a species.
About the Presenter
Angela Manno is an award-winning artist based in New York City. She is a graduate of Bard College and studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute, Parsons School of Design, and l’Ecole des Arts in Lacoste through Sarah Lawrence College, France. She trained with master iconographer Vladislav Andrejev in the ancient liturgical art of Byzantine-Russian iconography. Her works reside in many private collections throughout the Americas, the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia and in distinguished public collections including NASA and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Most recently, her icons of endangered and threatened species appear on the book cover of Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson’s new release, Come, Have Breakfast – Meditations on God and the Earth (Orbis Books, 2024).
For more info about Angela, visit https://angelamanno.com/.