THEY’RE ICONIC
ST. MICHAEL’S CHURCH NEARS FINISH OF FOUR-YEAR PROJECT TO RESTORE MURALS
WOONSOCKET – After an initial year of planning and then three years of painting, Michael Kapeluck of Carnegie, Penn., can finally say his restoration of the iconography inside St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church at 74 Harris Ave. is complete.
Kapeluck, a well-known Orthodox and Byzantine iconographer, was back at St. Michael’s this week installing the last batch of icons he created under a project that has filled the walls of the church and its sanctuary with images of the saints, Christ, the Madonna, the disciples and angels.
The imagery is just another part of a long road of restoration the St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church parish began after a Nov. 21, 2012, fire heavily damaged the sanctuary and other sections of the church and left its former icons dimmed and obscured by soot and heat.
Thankfully for the parish, the Woonsocket Fire Department’s quick response to the church fire saved the struc- ture of St. Michael’s, allowing its subsequent repair. But even after the walls had been re-plastered and repainted, the church was not yet restored to what it had been.
The iconography would also need to be restored to make St. Michael’s complete.
Enter, Kapeluck, the onetime secular artist who now 30 years ago decided to take on the religious painting the style of the great Orthodox and Byzantine masters.
Working in his studio, Kapeluck paints canvases that are then installed like a wall covering in a church. He also paints directly on plastered walls when that is necessary under a particular portion of a project.
Asked how he believes the St. Michael restoration turned out, Kapeluck said the results were pretty much what he and then St. Michael’s pastor, the Very Rev. Anthony Perkins, plotted out when it began.
The project took about a year of planning, including meetings with the Rev. Perkins and the parish council, and then the actual painting work, that would continue for another three years, began.
“When this project was
commissioned, I actually had other jobs on the books so that was one of reasons it took three years to complete,” he said. As he finished the installation of an icon of the Annunciation Wednesday evening, Kapeluck said he only had a few “punch list items” to take care of on Thursday and the removal of the scaffolding to complete the project.
St. Michael pastor, the Rev. Borislav Kroner, will hold services under the completed iconography at 10 a.m. on Sunday.
In all, Kapeluck said he placed the images of close to 100 saints on the walls of St. Michael’s while working on the project.
“It is pretty much what I thought it would be. I have been doing this for 30 years so when I get a concept it pretty much always is what I was thinking it would become.”
The iconography itself might be viewed by some as historical faith-based images, but Kapeluck said they are much more.
“It is the theology of the church,” he said.
The images reflect what is found in the prayers that are said during an Orthodox service and if viewers know what is contained within the religious service, they also know what the iconography represents, according to Kapeluck.
“We believe what we pray and pray what we believe,” he said. The icons do have a basis in the history of the church, “but first and foremost they expound upon the theology,” Kapeluck said.
As he looked over the imagery Kapeluck created for St. Michael’s, parish member Dan Bourgery said it appeared the restoration had reached its conclusion with the final icon installations.
“It’s amazing when you consider what we went through as a parish,-- where we were,” Bourgery, a past president of the parish council, said. “We have risen from the ashes to this,” he said of the brightly-colored and gold paint-highlighted images.
“I was here the morning of the fire and it was disheartening and devastating,” Bourgery said. Fortunately for Saint Michael parish, the church building was sound and repairs could be made.
After all of the needed interior and exterior work was completed, the parish then worked with Kapeluck to restore St. Michael’s iconography.
“It is incredible,” Bourgery said of the final result of restoration. “When you consider the fact that you don’t see many new churches getting done, Michael did an incredible job here,” he said.
Christine Charest, treasurer for the parish council, has been involved in the restoration from the start and was all smiles Wednesday evening as Kapeluck finished his work with an assistant atop a high scaffolding.
“This is almost five years to the day of the fire and for me the culmination is seeing St. Michael returned to the ceiling of the church,” Charest said. The installation of the saint’s icon at the place it had once held in the church was also completed by Kapeluck during his week-long stay in Woonsocket.
The winter weather that followed the fire kept repairs from starting until the next spring and that added to the time it took to reach Kapeluck’s finishing work on the project, Charest noted.
The installation of the last pieces of iconography was done as St. Michael’s prepares to host a special choral concert on Sunday, beginning at 4 p.m., that will bring in the Slatersville Congregational Church Choir to sing with the St. Michael Choir as a benefit for the Milk Fund and the Sanctuary Shelter in the city.
Slatersville Pastor Eileen Morris was among the first area clergy to offer St. Michael’s assistance after the fire, the temporary use of the historic Congregational Church for services, and while able to use their own parish hall instead, the parish’s members remember the gesture, Charest said.
Nearby St. Michael Ukrainian Catholic Church also held a benefit concert for the Orthodox parish, and Charest said Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Parish at Park Square was among the first of many donors to help out with the restoration project.
“It was wonderful of them all and that is why we wanted to hold a benefit for the Milk Fund and Shelter,” she said. “We wanted to give back to our community,” Charest said.