International artist Joni Zavitsanos was interviewed by Elissa Bjeletcih on her podcast Everyday Orthodox on Ancient Faith Radio. You can hear the whole hour-long interview on ancientfaith.com or listen to it below.
Ms. Zavitsanos discusses loving drawing from a young age and growing up in a Christian household where her father Diamantis J. Cassis was a Byzantine Iconographer. She talks about wonderful memories like taking her father back to Greece and secretly taking an art class in high school that helped solidify her creative path.
She catalogs her focus on art through undergraduate and masters work at college and how the haloed-figures and religious symbols in her printmaking made her teachers uncomfortable. And Ms. Zavitsanos talks about how she develops a sort of relationship with a saint when she paints an icon of the saint.
In the personal discussion she and the host also discuss a cancer Ms. Zavitsanos survived and how life’s challenges have made her a better artist and teacher.
The artist mentions both her fall show at Fordham University show September 12- December 12, 2019 and a show she has scheduled in Houston at the Match Gallery this winter from January 20 – February 6, 2020.