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As a designer of Orthodox churches, I am frequently asked whether a proposed church building will have good acoustics. Acoustics is a complex matter that cannot always be catagorized as simply “good” or “bad”. In order to shed some light on this topic, I am going to discuss the various acoustical characteristics encountered in churches, […]
My design work for Orthodox Churches has been featured in an article in The Pennsylvania Gazette, the magazine of University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater). It includes an interview discussing how I came to my vocation and my philosophy of traditional church design, followed by a lengthy excerpt from the book Charleston Fancy. I am […]
Andrew Gould, founder of the Orthodox Arts Journal, has been featured in a new work by popular architectural writer Witold Rybczynski. The author of over twenty bestselling books, Rybczynski’s latest work is called Charleston Fancy: Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City. The book is a history of Charleston architecture, told through the […]
On Wednesday, October 2, 2019, a very special choral masterclass was given in the lower room of the Great Bell Tower at the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra. This monastery is considered the spiritual center of all of Russia and of its Orthodox Church. Several different factors contributed to the particular significance of this masterclass. The […]
With great pleasure, I have developed a design for a new church for the Hermitage of the Holy Cross in West Virginia. In many ways, this design is the culmination of 15 years of thought, research, and experimentation on my part, and encapsulates the best of my ideas for Orthodox church design. I would like […]
Editor’s Note: This essay was originally written in Russian by master iconographer Anton Daineko of Minsk, Belarus. It beautifully explores the paradox of creativity within iconography from the very personal perspective of a lifelong practitioner. Anton and Ekaterina Daineko regularly teach icon-painting workshops in the USA, which are highly recommended. They have upcoming workshops in […]
A. Gould: How did you first set out to be an iconographer? What led to this decision, and what was your initial artistic training? V. Grygorenko: I began painting icons long before my conversion to Christianity, which happened back in 1991. For nine years I studied traditional oil painting in the art studio at Dnipropetrovsk […]
In the past thirty years, I have attended almost 7000 liturgies in the United States, Canada, Russia, and Greece. Some of these have been in small candlelit chapels in the desert of Mount Athos; others have been in magnificent imperial monasteries with a thousand years of history. I have beheld liturgies celebrated by patriarchs and […]
In a part of America that is rich with historic Orthodox churches, a new one, faithful to the local architectural tradition, is now under construction. In the spring of 2018 I travelled to Spruce Island, where St. Herman of Alaska lived from 1808 until his death in 1837. I had come to design a new […]
As a designer of Orthodox churches, it is unusual that my work would be featured in an art gallery. But just such an opportunity arose recently. I was asked to design the central pavilion for The City Luminous: Architectures of Hope in an Age of Fear, an exhibition on display this month in Charleston, SC. […]