Announcing an Exciting Book Project Featuring the Liturgical Arts of North America

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve partnered with the Sacred Arts Institute at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary to produce a major book featuring the best of North America’s Orthodox Liturgical Arts. This will be a high-quality art book focused on presenting excellent color images. We will feature historic and contemporary churches, icons, furnishings, metalwork, textiles,…

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Iconostases in Balkan Churches – Part 2: Dečani Monastery

The iconostases of Dečani Monastery are of such overwhelming interest that they warrant their own post in my photojournalism series. Dečani was built in 1327-1331. Among the hundreds of monasteries built by the medieval kingdom of Serbia, it was the tallest and grandest. Today, it is also, miraculously, the best preserved, with an extraordinary collection…

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Iconostases in Balkan Churches – Part 1: Serbia

Continuing my photojournalism series highlighting Balkan churches, this post features interesting iconostases I photographed in Serbia and in the Kosovo and Metohija region. These iconostases range from medieval to contemporary, and exhibit a remarkable range of styles. I find it fascinating to view them grouped together, and consider that there are such diverse solutions to…

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Portraits of Light and Shadow in Balkan Churches – Part 2: Peć, Gračanica, and Dečani

Continuing my photojournalism series highlighting Balkan churches, this post will feature wide-angle interior portraits of the three great monastery churches of the Kosovo and Metohija region. Peć, Gračanica, and Dečani are monuments of unequalled importance, astonishing for their architecture and frescoes, and for their incredible state of preservation in this most embattled region. Because few…

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Sacred Arts East and West: A Conversation with Aidan Hart, Jonathan Pageau, and Andrew Gould

The Institute of Sacred Arts (ISA) at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (SVOTS) will host a panel discussion with artists and scholars Aidan Hart, Jonathan Pageau, and Andrew Gould, on Monday, April 24, 2023, at 7:30 p.m. The event will be moderated by ISA founding director and SVOTS Professor of Systematic Theology Dr Peter Bouteneff and Associate Professor of…

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OAJ Tour of the Balkans Led by Andrew Gould

The Orthodox Arts Journal is sponsoring its first-ever art and architecture package tour, which will take place in the Balkans. This tour will last 2 weeks, and will visit all the key sites for medieval architecture, frescoes, and liturgical art in Serbia, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. It will begin in Belgrade on May, 30th, 2023,…

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A New Icon – Saint Katherine Teaching the Philosophers of the Alexandrian Court

I would like to share an interesting project in which I collaborated with iconographer Natalia Aglitskaya to develop a new icon composition. The project was a commission from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, to commemorate their fiftieth anniversary of coeducation, which occurred in 2019. The college wanted a memorial to the admission of women to…

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Acoustical Considerations in Orthodox Church Design

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,…

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