Hi TJ,
Many thanks for the beers. fyi, if you are working with source code from the repository, this is already implemented, otherwise you can expect it in the next release.
In order to prevent it from showing the images by default, I've added this to the stylemojo.css for each of the included Artisteer skins in /Data/skins.
.art-menu .t img { display:none;}
.art-vmenu .t img { display:none; }
you will need to remove that display:none; and you may need to apply other setting like display:inline; padding etc to make the images align as you would like since the Artisteer design does not expect images there. Artisteer uses a set of spans around the menu links which are inline elements, and technically you're not supposed to have block elements like img inside of inline elements like span, but it is correct/ok if you set the img to display:inline since that changes it from a block element to an inline element.
Best,
Joe