Aymara Madonna and Christ Child.
Lakota Madonna
Fr. Giuliani has produced an astounding number of Madonna representations inspired by Native American culture and art. They come in two series of 14 panels each: one of them is simply called The Madonna Series; the other, The Crow Series, refers more specifically to the Montana based Crow tribe, whose native American name is Absoroke, or "People of the Great Beaked Bird," translated as "Crow." If the Madonna Series highlights a variety of tribal depictions (e.g., Hopi, Sioux, Navajo, Lakota), so The Crow Series offers a whole life of Mary. The following comments concentrate on The Crow Series' icons.
Icons are an expression of the mysteries of the incarnation, the divine becoming human. The key to access the full empowerment of the icon is to surrender to its contemplation, allowing the soul to open up to the revealed Christian mysteries. Fr. Giuliani expanded the traditional rules of iconography to reach out to the Native Americans whose culture Christian arts had left unexplored.
The Crow Series pictures Mary's destiny through her relations to Christ, according to the spiritual significance of the forms, colors and artifacts inherent to the Crow people's religious heritage.
http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/gallery/johngallery.html
Fr. John B. Giuliani was ordained in 1960. He holds an MA in theology from St. John Seminary in Brighton, an MA in classical studies from Fordham and an MA in American Studies from Fairfield University. He resumed his early interest in art at the Benedictine Grange, a small monastic community that he established in 1977 in West Redding, Connecticut. In 1989, he studied icon painting in New York under a master in the Russian Orthodox style before beginning his Giuliani’s works have been exhibited in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, the Marian Institute in Dayton, Ohio, the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in New Haven, Connecticut and the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
