Angela Manno, “Apis, the Honey Bee” (2016) and “Pangolin” (2021), egg tempera and gold leaf on wood (all images © and courtesy Angela Manno)

The Artist Painting Icons of Earth’s Endangered Species

While the human cannot make a blade of grass, there is liable not to be a blade of grass unless it is accepted, protected and fostered by the human. — Thomas Berry

Angela Manno applies her knowledge of Byzantine iconography to memorialize the fauna and flora whose days are threatened or already past.

Sarah Rose Sharp for Hyperallergic

February 16, 2023

In each of her emails, beneath the sign-off, Angela Manno includes a quote from Thomas Berry’s The Determining Features of Ecozoic Era (1998), whose premise is that Earth “can survive only in its integral functioning.” Manno is one of many artists who feel increasingly called to centralize issues of ecology within their practice, an aim perhaps best expressed in her ongoing series Contemporary Icons of Threatened and Endangered Species, which merges the beauty of biodiversity with the horrors of its impending loss.

“Art and activism are my dual callings and for some time, I longed to bring them both together,” Manno told Hyperallergic. Combining her training in traditional Byzantine Russian iconography and experience in environmental organizing, the artist creates “icons” dedicated to fauna and flora whose days on Earth are threatened or already past.

Angela Manno, “Apis, the Honey Bee” (2016) and “Pangolin” (2021), egg tempera and gold leaf on wood (all images © and courtesy Angela Manno)

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