Igumen the Iconographer

“We are here. And we were not supposed to be.”

“Call me Charlie.”

Those were the first words spoken to me by Igumen, the legendary, and rather mysterious, iconographer active in the metro New York area in the 1980’s. How I came to meet him, and to find his small studio filled with his labors and tools, captures what ecumenism was once like.

I forget exactly why now, I think it was because I had struc…