Vladimir Morosan on The Pursuit of Beauty Podcast

On two recent episodes of The Pursuit of Beauty podcast, I had the tremendous privilege of interviewing long-time Orthodox Arts Journal contributor Vladimir Morosan. He relates his experiences traveling abroad to the Soviet Union, being given access to photograph thousands of musical scores, and his process smuggling them back to the United States. He founded the…

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Georgian Orthodox Chant – Almost Lost Forever, with Dr. John Graham

In this conversation with renowned Georgian Orthodox chant expert Dr. John Graham, we discuss the origins, history, and preservation of Georgia’s ancient three-part polyphonic sacred music. Dr. Graham—widely regarded as the foremost English-speaking authority on Georgian Orthodox liturgical chant—explores the early development of this musical tradition, from the creation of the Georgian alphabet and the…

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Organicity and Sham

Author’s Note: This article was written for a Moscow magazine on church aesthetics, and speaks to the situation with church art in parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church. In American churches, the situation is somewhat different. For example, icons and church utensils in America are not manufactured on the massive scale that occurs in Russia.…

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Windows to the Divine: Orthodox Icons – an Interview with Seraphim O’Keefe

In this captivating interview, iconographer Seraphim O’Keefe shares his remarkable journey from an unchurched teenager in Virginia to a novice monk in the Republic of Georgia and eventually a full-time iconographer in the Orthodox Church. He recounts his spiritual awakening through encounters with sacred art and ancient monastic traditions, surviving a 70-foot fall off a…

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An American Kouvouklion: A New Design for the Tomb of Christ

Over the years, I have designed numerous furnishings for American Orthodox churches. Because America has a rich tradition of fine furniture making, I have always felt that liturgical woodwork is one of the areas in which America can offer something distinctive to Orthodox culture. When I was asked to design a kouvouklion (the liturgical “tomb”…

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Building for the Divine: The Art of Orthodox Architecture with Andrew Gould

In this long-format interview, Andrew Gould discusses numerous aspects of liturgical arts and architecture with Anglican organist Matthew Wilkinson. Our conversation touches upon church architecture, Eastern and Western rites, American cultural heritage from hymn-singing to fine woodworking, robotic production of ornamentation, historic styles from baroque to brutalist, liturgical music, acoustics, and much more.

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Humility

Icon by Juliania Sokolova VS an icon painted by a student of a school she founded at Moscow Spiritual Academy

If only we could speak to ourselves from the future! How many valuable insights and skills could we have shared with our past selves! On the other hand, how would we have learned these things if not through the mistakes we make today? Is there a way to learn without mistakes? We have books, videos,…

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