Perhaps many of you haven’t heard, or don’t remember, the name Kelly Latimore, but he is a man who deserves to be known because of his work as an iconographer. I am posting this article to expand the circle of those who know & appreciate Latimore’s outstanding artistic creations and what we can learn from him.
Ruth
Harder, my pastor, is finishing her work on “Stained Theology,” the name of
her pastoral study grant project funded by the Louisville Institute (which you
can learn more about here).
Her
project grew out of concern at Rainbow Mennonite Church regarding the large
stained glass window in our sanctuary, which I wrote about in my 10/10/20
blog article titled “What To Do about a White Jesus?”.
Pastor
Ruth’s meticulous study has been not only about stained glass windows but also how
images of Jesus in such windows and elsewhere have stained, in a negative way,
theological understanding and has abetted racism and attitudes of white
supremacy.
In
her research, she visited Kelly Latimore in St. Louis, and while he is not
directly involved with stained glass windows, he has produced many striking
images of Jesus (and his birth family).
This
past Sunday (Sept. 10), Kelly was the guest speaker at Rainbow Mennonite
Church.*
Kelly
Latimore is a youngish (b. 1986) artist who grew up as a PK (pastor’s kid)
in a conservative church in the suburbs of Chicago and graduated from
Greenville College (now University), a conservative Christian school in central Illinois. And then his religious
viewpoint/understanding expanded.
From
2009-13 he lived/worked on the Good Earth Farm in Ohio as one of the Common
Friars, affiliated with the Episcopal Church. It was there in 2010 that he
painted his first icon.**
After
Trump was elected President in 2016, the first icon he drew was “Refugees: La
Sagrada Familia,” in which Latin immigrants crossing the desert depicts the
holy family’s flight to Egypt. A picture of that icon is on Pope
Francis’s 2018 book A Stranger and You Welcomed Me.
Kelly’s
most widely known (and in some circles infamous) icon was the one titled “Mama”
(pictured above). It was painted in 2020 in the aftermath of the killing of George
Floyd in Minneapolis. Kelly and this icon, among others, was featured in a 5/5/21
Christian Century article (see
here).
These
two icons elicited hate mail and even death threats. Kelly says, though, that
such opposition is confirmation that his “icons are preaching as they should.”
In
his Sunday talk at Rainbow Church, Kelly referred to icons as “windows to
God,” and his icons mainly show God and God’s actions in the world now, not in
the past.
He emphasized
that as an artist he must “pay attention,” and that all of us “must practice
seeing.” Kelly’s icons help us to see, to engage in what he calls “holy
pondering.” He also challenged us not only to see, but to become “living icons,”
acting for peace and justice in this needy world.
The
icons of the past, most prominent in the Eastern Orthodox Church, always
portray the holy family or recognized saints with halos. Kelly’s icons are of
contemporary people who have not been formally designated as saints by any
Church, but they are “saints” nevertheless because they are windows to God.
His modern-day
“saints” include several African Americans, such as MLK Jr., James Cone, and
John Lewis. But there are also notable White saints as well: Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Henri Nouwen, Mr. Rogers, and Mary Oliver, for example.
Although he didn’t mention it Sunday, one of Kelly’s recent
and publicized paintings is of Matthew Shepard. It is now in the Washington
National Cathedral. Their website explains:
On Dec. 1, 2022, on what would have been Matthew Shepard's 46th birthday, the Cathedral dedicated a devotional portrait of Matthew Shepard by acclaimed iconographer Kelly Latimore.
I encourage you to open this link to see a picture of that portrait and the story about it.
My prayer is that we all will learn from
Kelly how to see God more fully through the icons, the “windows of God” around
us, and that we, too, can more and more become living icons.
____
* The YouTube video of that worship
service is available for viewing by clicking this link, and Pastor Ruth’s introduction and Kelly’s talk
begins at the 18:50 mark.
** Kelly tells about painting his
first icon in this article.
NOTE: Learn/see more about Kelly’s
icons by clicking this link to his website. Reproductions of his
icons can be purchased by linking to “store.”
 |
| LKS posing with Kelly on Sept. 10 |
Thanks, Leroy. Kelly’s work is marvelous. I especially like the concept of windows to God.
ReplyDelete—Anton
Thanks Leroy. I really appreciated both Kelly's presentation and your summary of his work. It deserves attention.
ReplyDeleteThe first comments I received this morning (before 6:00!) was from Thinking Friend Greg Hadley, who lives in Japan but who is visiting his mother in Missouri this week. He wrote,
ReplyDelete"How wonderful that you had a chance to interact with and meet this talented artist! You have an absolutely marvelous circle of thinking friends, as evidenced from the responses on your blog page."
About the same time, I also received comments from local Thinking Friend David Nelson:
ReplyDelete"I so appreciate your comments about Kelly and his breathtaking icons. Contemporary icons are powerful 'windows' to God indeed."
A local Thinking Friend, just recently added to that august list, an Old Testament scholar and a former pastor and adjunct university professor who began attending Rainbow Mennonite Church a few months ago, sent the following comments by email:
ReplyDelete"Leroy, thanks for this article. I was not able to be there this last Sunday, so I appreciate the time you took to create the links and include the link to Kelly’s message this last Sunday. I was able to click on every link and listen to Kelly speak. It was extremely good. Thank you for pulling this all together. Excellent!
"My thoughts were drawn to the Hebrew word for image used in Genesis 2 and John 1, that we were created in the image and likeness of God. The Hebrew word is "tselem" for image. The etymology brings forth the idea to 'shadow forth' or 'mirror' God, which is an action verb that calls us to shadow forth in our own cultural settings, a God of love. The idea of likeness (Hebrew = 'Demuth') again brings forth the idea of development and becoming.
"Of course, Christ is the image, who came in the likeness of us human beings, and we are called to shadow forth and develop into his likeness. Kelly Latimore beautifully helps us / inspires us with his art to reflect, ponder, how we can shadow forth the likeness of Christ in our culture and community. It surely brings much lament, as in the icon of George Floyd, called Mama and the refugees icon. I pray that we will develop and become better at 'shadowing forth' the image of Christ."
A Thinking Friend in Arizona sent these comments by email this morning:
ReplyDelete"Leroy, a very interesting blog and a wonderful subject of icons Kelly chose as a subject for his art. Yes, the whiteness of religious icons and general representations of Christianity also expose the supremacist ideologies of the west."
Here are brief comments from a Thinking Friend who is a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church and who wasn't able to attend services Sunday because of upcoming surgery:
ReplyDelete"So glad you wrote about Kelly! I watched the church service and was very impressed. Enjoyed your post.
Thinking Friend Bob Hanson in Milwaukee wrote,
ReplyDelete"Wonderful article Leroy. I touched most of the links and have a lot to read now. . . . Another winner, brother."
And then, here are comments by Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for sharing the icons of this remarkable artist, Kelly Latimore. The icon pictured in your blog is particularly touching.
"Some Protestants regard icons as idolatrous, but that betrays a serious misunderstanding of icons; I certainly appreciate Kelly's view of icons. Judy and I own several Greek and Russian icons, which we treat as works of art. Wicker Park Lutheran Church has several icons, which can be used for devotional purposes. The Madonna and Child in those icons are all dark-skinned, which probably more accurately reflects the true skin color of Jesus and other Judeans in the first century CE."
Thank you so much for this excellent blog post, Leroy.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of Kelly Latimore, nor have I seen his icons until now. He is a gifted artist. His icons of Jesus seem to be influenced by the Eastern Orthodox icons, however the other icons of other "saints" seem to have a more contemporary style. They are works of art that inspire and instruct, and hopefully draw viewers closer into God's presence, love and grace.
To paraphrase on old adage: There are at least a thousand words in a picture (in this case, an icon).
Here are thought-provoking comments received this morning from Thinking Friend Debra Sapp-Yarwood, one of the members of Rainbow Mennonite Church who has been most vocal about the need to deal with the issue of our church's stained glass window depicting a White Jesus.
ReplyDelete"Loved your blog. I didn't need to click the links, because I've already been to them or experienced them, but I'm glad others are inviting Latimore's work into their grey matter. My big prayer is that our church, who really was just beginning to ponder what we ought to do about our white Jesus window when you posted your 10/10/20 blog article, is now ready to have a congregation-wide conversation about what we want our window to say about God and about us; to say to God, to say to ourselves and to the community.
"Ruth's sermon on 8/27/23 really drove home that changing this window is not merely a 'want' but a theological 'need.' It's about integrity. She told a story about two white travelers who were studied in stained glass and wanted to see ours. In ignorance of all the conversations our church has been having, the travelers instructed Ruth NOT to destroy the 'integrity' of our window. I gasped when I heard that. What is integrity and how can we help people rethink it? We now know, the window is not even the original, historic window that was placed in that spot, so it's not about historic integrity. (Even if it was, is it a history worth displaying in a position of honor?). It's been altered from an ascending Jesus to a feet-on-the-ground Jesus, so it's not preserving some immutable theological principle; it's advancing a different one -- with an ever-white Jesus. Is it the integrity of the light quality it projects?
"In the question-and-answer time we had with Kelly Latimore, he suggested that if/when we work with a stained glass artist to replace the Jesus image, that person might incorporate glass from Jesus to create a new image of some sort, which could preserve its light quality.
"I think integrity may have something to do with humility and conceding that our window communicates to us, to God and to others (including white travelers), and we need to be careful and intentional. And our conversation needs to be bigger than how can we 'fix' our Jesus. It needs to start with how Jesus has 'fixed' (and continues to fix) us, so that we grow and recognize how important art and theology are and, by extension, how important this project is."