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What is the value in abstract art?
This week I took my 7th and 8th grade art students to visit the Modern art museum in Fort Worth. There were a lot of comments such as:...

Lara Neri
Sep 19, 20193 min read


Death & Decapitation
I really don’t like thinking about death, but I think about it a lot. It is brought to the forefront of my thoughts by tragic events...

Lara Neri
Aug 29, 20193 min read


my top three favorite museums in London
The British Museum - full of brilliant historical art and artifacts - like the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, and the colossal...

Lara Neri
Jul 25, 20191 min read


Whilst Residing at the Palace Court Hotel
or "Part Two of My First European Adventure" In the summer of 1995, I made my first trek across Europe. I began by touring England and...

Lara Neri
Jul 19, 20196 min read


My First European Adventure: Part One
This month twenty four years ago, in the summer of 1995, I made my first trek across Europe. I began by touring England and Scotland...

Lara Neri
Jul 11, 20195 min read


Not Arrested in Italy
In the fall of 1995, I traveled to Italy to study for the semester at the University of Dallas Rome campus, located just outside of Rome...

Lara Neri
Jun 27, 20196 min read


My favorite Russian Murderer
My husband and I have just finished a refreshing three-day class at the Dallas Institute discussing Gogol’s Dead Souls, Melville’s...

Lara Neri
Jun 13, 20195 min read


Grandmother
Growing up my I thought of my grandmother as grouchy and unpleasant. I never looked forward to visiting her and she, in turn, seemed...

Lara Neri
Jun 6, 20194 min read


Ascending Hero Mountain
When I taught English in China, we were in a filthy, rat-infested village, crawling with giant cockroaches and shrouded in a pervasive...

Lara Neri
May 30, 20193 min read


Flowery Sunday in Constantinople
Flowery (Palm) Sunday began to be celebrated in Constantinople by the fifth century - a couple centuries after it began in Jerusalem and...

Lara Neri
Apr 10, 20195 min read


Superheroes & the Triumph of Orthodoxy
The first time I remember seeing an icon was in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. I was taking a class in Israel my sophomore year...

Lara Neri
Mar 19, 20193 min read


Suffering & Softening
The feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple (2 February) is one of the Twelve Major Feast Days in the Eastern Church, also...

Lara Neri
Feb 1, 20192 min read


tea & tiny emperors
This past summer I was very blessed to be able to participate not only in another iconography class with the Byzantine School of...

Lara Neri
Jan 17, 20182 min read


rebirth & regeneration: the image of the snake
Today in our third Tuesday of elementary art camp, we read Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, an African fairytale about a prince who...

Lara Neri
Jun 21, 20161 min read


the iconography of faerytales
With the collapse of Imperial Russia and the rise of the Bolsheviks in 1917, the art & prayer of icon painting was suppressed....

Lara Neri
Jun 15, 20162 min read


beauty & simplicity
The Japanese have a gift for the pursuit of Beauty. It is apparent in their art, their fashion, their gardening, their tea ceremony. The...

Lara Neri
Jun 8, 20161 min read


the transformative power of story
Various influences were dropped into my path that lead me into the Catholic Church, one of the most prominent being the work of Fyodor...

Lara Neri
May 8, 20161 min read


the feast of St. George
St. George is a popular saint, renowned for slaying a dragon and saving a princess. He is venerated as a vanquisher of evil and knight of...

Lara Neri
May 4, 20161 min read


doing shots for the saints
The first time I met Babushka, my friend Ira’s 76 year old grandmother, she appeared as a tiny speck in a row boat across the water. As...

Lara Neri
May 2, 20163 min read


creating a sacred space in the home
When I was living in St. Petersburg, I rented a small, airy room in a sunny, high-ceilinged apartment on the corner of Dostoevsky Street...

Lara Neri
Apr 26, 20162 min read
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