Posts Tagged ‘theotokos’
Sacred Space, Sacred Art and The Power of Women
We live in a confused time. Many of the basic foundations which hold the world together have been made fragile. Up/down, center/periphery, inside/outside have all been eroded in their power to frame existence as we watch floodwaters rise around us. One of the foundations systematically attacked through sophisticated rhetoric and political ideology is the complementary…
Continue reading »Two images of the Church and why they should not be confused.
Christological and Pneumatological Images of the Church In early Christian art, there developed a series of complementary visual relationships which I have discussed on numerous occasions and have come to often characterize as the right hand and the left hand of Christ. These elements, like the ass and the ox, St-Peter and St-Paul, the good…
Continue reading »Steatite Icons and Material Symbolism
One of the points many OAJ contributors have been trying to bring across is that the medium out of which sacred art is made and the artful human act of fabrication are important on a symbolic and theological level. This question of materiality and production have become crucial ones in our age of mechanical reproduction…
Continue reading »Some New Musical Repertoire in Honor of the Mother of God
One of the rewards of working with a group of professional-level singers such as Archangel Voices (www.archangelvoices.com) is the opportunity to explore and record, often for the very first time, some newly composed or newly arranged Orthodox sacred choral repertoire. Even more rewarding is to hear on occasion that our efforts have met with approbation…
Continue reading »Seat of Wisdom
A few months ago, Aidan Hart wrote a wonderful article on the possibility of statuary acting as icon. He did this in the context of having sculpted a model for a stone version of the Seat of Wisdom. Just as he was posting his article, I was also receiving a commission for a wooden carving…
Continue reading »Designing a Syrian Orthodox Panagia
I was recently asked by a young student of St-Vladimir’s Seminary to make a Panagia which he wanted to give to his bishop. This student is of Indian background and a Syrian Orthodox. I have always been fascinated by Orthodoxy in India, the stories of St-Thomas, the link with Nestorian Christianity and also their long…
Continue reading »A Carver’s Commission
At the beginning of this story is my bishop, fittingly also the man who received me into the Orthodox Church when he was still a parish priest. He asked me if I could carve an “engolpion” – a large pendant worn by bishops, usually bearing an icon of The Virgin and Child. He asked…
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