In this 2025 interview with Justine Willis Toms, Artist and iconographer Angela Manno, creator of the Sacred Biodiversity Oracle, describes her deck of 36 cards portraying animals and plants from around the world. Manno’s luminous paintings shimmer with quiet, radical devotion to the living Earth, encouraging us to encounter other beings and ecosystems as sacred presences rather than distant “resources.” Environmental leader Bill McKibben has described her work as “Powerful reminders of the beauty and holiness of the world we are destroying, and of our duty to protect what remains.”

Manno says that when we look beyond our ego-centered view, we see we’re not separate from nature. Our survival, sanity, and meaning depend on recognizing the living web of life that sustains us. By tuning into the more-than-human world, we begin to heal the split fueling ecological destruction and remember a more reciprocal way of being.

Angela Manno is an award-winning visual artist based in New York City whose work weaves together spirituality, ecology, and contemporary iconography. A Bard College graduate, she also studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and Parsons School of Design. She has also trained in Byzantine-Russian iconography with master Vladislav Andrejev. Her work has been exhibited at major institutions, including the Smithsonian, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and NASA’s collections. She is especially known for her series Contemporary Icons of Threatened and Endangered Species.

She is the creator of The Sacred Biodiversity Oracle (Bear & Company 2026)

Interview Date: 1/9/2026

Keywords: Angela Manno, Thomas Berry, Byzantine-Russian iconography, Viso Divina, Maasai lion guardians, Jane Goodall, conservation, environmental stewardship, Sundance ritual, Sandra Steingraber, Art & Creativity, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Meditation, Personal Transformation