From the Buffalo News: A stunning makeover at St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church

Lackawanna church getting a lush coat of imagery

After more than 50 years, the spartan whiteness inside St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church is steadily disappearing beneath a lush coat of luminous Christian imagery.

A huge portrait of Jesus Christ haloed in gold leaf now peers from overhead. Dramatic scenes out of the Bible, such as the healing of the paralyzed man and the raising of Lazarus, are depicted on other sections of the curved ceiling.

The Rev. Theodore Jurewicz, a master iconographer from Erie, Pa., is about a quarter of the way through a stunning makeover of the Lackawanna church. When completed, the ceiling and walls will be covered with 22 scenes of biblical feasts and miracles, as well as paintings of numerous Christian saints and martyrs.

For Orthodox Christians, the colorful icons are not mere paintings: They are considered essential elements of the worship experience and bridges between the earthly and the divine.

—We call icons windows into heaven,— said the Rev. Rastko Trbuhovich , pastor of St. Stephen.

Icons have graced the iconostasis —” a screen that separates the nave from the sanctuary —” since the 90- year-old parish opened a new church at Abbott and Weber roads in the 1950s.

Those icons were —written— by the late Rev. Kiprian Pishew, a legendary iconographer who trained students in the Russian-Serbian style at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville in Central New York.

Jurewicz, 57, was one of those apprentices and is now himself highly regarded in the world of iconography. The parishioners of St. Stephen waited at least a decade for him to become available for their project, figuring that he would be the best iconographer to integrate new frescoes with the old…

An interesting bit of history. Right next door to St. Stephen Serbian Orthodox Church is Our Lady of Bistrica Roman Catholic Church (Croatian). Interesting neighbors during the Balkan wars – they actually got along amicably and with Christian charity.