Andrew Gould Featured in New Book and New Website
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…
Continue reading »Preparatory Drawings as Temporary Icons: An Alternative Solution
In preparation for our patronal feast, at the Monastery of St. Dionysios the Areopagite, we ran into the problem of our unfinished, blank iconostasis. What could be done for the occasion in order to make it more presentable? First, as is common, we thought of speedily acquiring temporary icon reproductions to fill in the empty…
Continue reading »Coming Full Circle: A Masterclass at the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra
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…
Continue reading »Fr Gregory Kroug – An Exhibition Honoring the 50th Anniversary of his Repose
The Exhibition In late June, I was blessed with the opportunity to spend a week in Paris, attending an exhibition in honor of the 50th anniversary of the repose of iconographer monk Gregory Kroug. The event ran from May 14th through June 30th, and included a curated exhibition of Kroug’s iconography displayed in the…
Continue reading »A Beautiful Church for Holy Cross Monastery in West Virginia
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…
Continue reading »Worship in the Workshop: Providing Opportunities to Raise the Bar
The joke is at times heard that in the chapels of some of our seminaries, they “don’t worship but workshop.” The sense of this witticism is that what happens in their services is experimentation with rubrics, texts, service order, with an impulse towards “reform.” Over the course of this last summer, however, I was blessed…
Continue reading »The Living Icon
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…
Continue reading »An Interview with Iconographer Vladimir Grygorenko – His Recent Work and Developing Style
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…
Continue reading »Coming Soon: The Liturgical Arts Academy, August 18-24 2019
English-speaking Orthodox faithful in the United States who have wanted to learn the liturgical arts of the Orthodox Church — music, iconography, vestments, architecture and furnishings design, etc. — have historically had limited opportunities to study with knowledgeable teachers. Some have had the opportunity to go overseas to countries such as Greece and Russia to…
Continue reading »‘The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting’: A Chinese painting manual offers inspiration to iconographers
Truth is truth wherever it is found. In fact, it is all the more delicious when found in unexpected places. I was at the opening of an exhibition of The St John’s Bible, for which I had been one of the illuminators, and fell into conversation with one of the professors at Minnesota University. We…
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