coming in 2024

We are beginning to assemble a book highlighting the art of the Orthodox Church in North America.

The aim is to produce a treasure trove of images of liturgical art and architecture. This book will narrate how our founders built and decorated our churches then and now, and will show how our forebears creatively adapted Old-World Orthodox tradition to New-World contexts. It will celebrate the wide range of visual arts used to support Orthodox liturgy and worship, from architecture to icons, liturgical furnishings, vessels, textiles, manuscripts, and more.

Co-editors: Andrew Gould and Peter Bouteneff, drawing on the skills and experience of a small advisory group.

we are searching

We are collaborating to identify artworks to include:

  • Work that clearly represents adaptation to the North American setting.

    • We are less interested in work that simply copies Old World standards. Instead we seek Orthodox examples that feature distinct elements of New World materials, subjects, symbols, flora/fauna, or aesthetics.

  • Work that has historical significance.

    • Examples that were groundbreaking in their era–or that have been loved and venerated for generations–will help us tell the North American liturgical arts story.

  • Important contemporary work.

    • Recent works by living artists serving today’s church in influential ways.

  • Sheer beauty.

    • Examples that highlight the very best examples of North American Orthodox liturgical arts to inspire artists, worshippers, and church leaders.

Where you come in

1. We need your help in identifying artworks:

  • Historic churches that exhibit exceptional beauty, preservation, or adaptation to local culture or context.

  • New churches that exhibit high standards along with a distinctive style or aesthetic.

  • Non-Orthodox churches that have been adapted for Orthodox use in a way that beautifully reflects a union of Orthodox and local styles.

  • Objects or architectural elements. Even the most ordinary churches sometimes have individual elements of great interest. This might be a stained-glass window of exceptional quality or crafted by a famous American glass artist. Or a unique example of locally-made Orthodox furniture. It might be a handcrafted vestment of folkish style. Or a liturgical book bound with a handmade cover.

  • Interesting and beautiful icons, both old and new, that express the character and history of Orthodoxy in North America.

  • Liturgical artists, both living and reposed, whose works we should feature, or whose life story is a compelling narrative of the North American Orthodox journey.

  • We’re looking for pieces that show the wide variety and diversity of Orthodox and North American culture and artistic expression. This means we’re interested in artworks that feel North American in a broad sense, but also in artworks with a very local expression—objects specific to Orthodoxy in Alaska, Quebec, or Mexico, for instance.

2. If you are an artist, would you be interested in creating a work for potential inclusion in this book?

  • Textile artist? Consider creating an icon towel, icon stand cover, vestment, or banner that reflects a North American craft tradition (like colonial-era embroidery, Victorian samplers, African-American quilting, or Native American weaving). 

  • Skilled woodworker? Consider making an icon stand, icon frame, or other liturgical piece that reflects a local woodwork tradition (like 18th-century American fine furniture, Shaker chairs, Southwest-Mission or Stickley style, Victorian Eastlake furniture). 

  • Master iconographer? Consider creating a distinctive icon with a North American theme (a local saint, a distinctly American, Canadian, or Mexican landscape, or locally-meaningful decorative motifs).

  • Blacksmith? Silversmith? Leather Worker? Typographer? Manuscript Illuminator? Stained glass artist? If there’s an art form with a North American pedigree that you’d like to create, we will consider it. 

3. We need your support. 

  • Are you interested in offering financial support towards the enormous effort of researching and designing this substantial book?

  • Are you a photographer? We need professional-quality images of beautiful (and sometimes remote) Orthodox churches and their contents.

Please contact us.

We have been receiving a good number of suggested images! And we are extending the deadline for submissions until February 1, 2024. Please direct your inquiries or submissions to olana@svots.edu.

More information

WHAT

We are producing a book that will highlight examples of Orthodox Christian liturgical art and architecture from the North American continent. It will tell its story through high-quality images, supported by essays that provide historical, theological, and other context.

WHY

For nearly 250 years, Orthodox Christian missionaries, immigrants, and converts to the faith have been building and adorning their churches on the North American continent. Their work has been a testimony to the process of cultural embedding. Some sought to reproduce old-world patterns to the best of their means and yet still created something new. Others deliberately sought to adapt liturgical art to a local cultural context. In recent years, we see a flourishing of liturgical artists who skillfully maintain fidelity to Orthodox tradition while engaging enthusiastically with local craft traditions and aesthetics.

We feel that the time has come to present American Orthodoxy as an artistically distinct phenomenon, with discernible styles. These styles are still emergent, to be sure, but enough good examples of uniquely North American Orthodox art and architecture now exist that it is possible to characterize, highlight, and promote these styles as our own.

Through its essays, and even more through its images, this book will have missional, pastoral, and theological significance. It will also be beautiful. It will be a particular resource for young artists and for the churches that engage them, demonstrating a range of stylistic possibilities as well as standards of workmanship and refinement to which we may aspire.

WHO

These co-editors, with their advisory committee, are working in collaboration with SVS Press, the largest Orthodox Christian press in the English-speaking world. The volume is planned to be part of the Sacred Arts imprint, which the Press is inaugurating in collaboration with the seminary’s Institute of Sacred Arts.