Biography, Experience, Current Projects and Fee Schedules
Mission:
Nancy Lee Smith, IHM's overall mission is to depict God as Beauty, and to fascinate others with God's Beauty. Sometimes this Beauty is seen in the eyes of a saint, the windows to the soul. She also teaches others how to use icons for prayer, to see themselves as being seen with the eyes of love in the icon. Nancy also explains the rich symbolism in icons.

Biography and Education:
Nancy, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in metal sculpture from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. Her Master of Divinity is from St. John Seminary, Plymouth, Michigan. Her iconography training includes apprenticeships with Ksenia Pokrovsky of Moscow, Russia and Boston, Massachusetts.

Commission Requirements:
Icons are painted in egg tempera on mahogany boards using gold leaf. Icons are also painted, or "written," in acrylics on fine birch plywood. Both woods are covered first with cloth and adhesive. Pricing depends upon the complexity and size. It takes about two years to complete the research and design, and several months to execute. One-third of the final price is required to initiate the contract.

Works:
Nancy has completed some 75 icons which vary from twelve feet to less than a foot in width. These hang in a number of institutions in various countries. She has written the icons of a dozen founders.

New Directions:
Ten foundresses of religious congregations are being featured in a new book Nancy is writing, telling what impacted her as artist about them, and showing the icons which portray it.
Feminine Images of God from the Church Fathers is an original body of oil paintings based on recent documentation which names the Holy Spirit as, for example, "Nursing Mother." Nancy is publishing a second book of her paintings with the corresponding citations.