Posts Tagged ‘Russian Orthodox’
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.…
Continue reading »Painting as Prayer, The Art of A. Sophrony Sakharov
Editorial note: This is the third part of a series on the artistic path and iconographic legacy of Saint Sophrony the Athonite (1896-1993) as seen through a collection of monographs written by Sister Gabriela, a member of his monastic community in Essex, England. The previous articles, Seeking Perfection in the World of Art can be…
Continue reading »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…
Continue reading »‘Being’, The Art and Life of Father Sophrony
Archimandrite Sophrony, painting Christ at the Last Supper, early 1980s, the Monastery of St John the Baptist, Refectory.[1] Image: ©The Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Essex. Editorial note: This is the second part of a series on the artistic path and iconographic legacy of Saint Sophrony (Sakharov) as seen through a collection…
Continue reading »Blessed Art Thou among Women—a New Release by the PaTRAM Institute Singers
Blessed Art Thou among Women—a New Release by the PaTRAM Institute Singers, Peter Jermihov, Conductor Reviewed by Vladimir Morosan The liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church is extremely rich with hymnography in honor of the Virgin Mary—the Most Holy Theotokos or Mother of God, as she is typically referred to. Virtually every complex of Orthodox…
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 »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 »“And the Glory of The Lord Filled the Tabernacle” – Some Reflections on the World Premiere of Benedict Sheehan’s Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom
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…
Continue reading »A Monastic Chapel for Spruce Island, Alaska
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…
Continue reading »Seeking Perfection in the World of Art: The Artistic Path of Father Sophrony
Editorial note: Due to its little-known subject matter and the book’s current limited availability in some regions, the following is a summary, rather than a standard review, of Seeking Perfection in the World of Art: The Artistic Path of Father Sophrony1 – Sister Gabriela’s monograph on the artistic journey and iconographic legacy of Elder Sophrony.…
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