"Seven bottles of light in a stone box"

Friday April 25, Seattle, Washington, USA

Travelling north to Seattle feels like going on retreat.
The last few days have been extraordinary. My colleague John Wyver and I have met more than sixty young artists during whirlwind casting sessions in New York and Los Angeles. We've been trying to find two artists with sufficient bravura and artistic merit to feature in a forthcoming television series called Art Race. The premise of the show is simple: is it possible to cross the USA on a single dollar, surviving only on art? We think we've cast the right artists -- but that's another blog.

The two-and-a-half hour flight from Los Angeles passes smoothly and I arrive late at night in a rather shabby, smelly mid-town hotel. The establishment's only mitigating comfort (apart from my room's bed) is the wonderful view it affords of Rem Koolhaas's neighbouring Public Library.
I'm in Seattle, Washington to film the final building of the Christianity film, the Chapel of St.Ignatius on the Seattle University campus. Designed by local wonder-architect Steven Holl, the building is acclaimed as an incredible exercise in shade and light or as Holl describes it, "seven bottles of light in a stone box". Sniffily, I begin to wonder whether his claim might only be empty "architecture-speak"

Early next morning, cameraman Kevin and sound-man Tom have their own reservations. "Doesn't look all that from the outside," they offer helpfully. Maybe, maybe not, but blue skies are forecast and soon we'll have the opportunity of seeing the building in optimum conditions. We've given ourselves only a single day to capture everything we'll need and, with a couple of masses and a wedding to negotiate, the next few hours promise to be fairly full.

At hand to illuminate us is Father Cobb. A professor at the university, Father Cobb worked with Holl from the building's conception, and proves one of the most effective communicators of the entire series. He has an incredible knowledge -- and passion -- for the building. We're in good hands.
Father Cobb explains the building's genesis (from a water-colour by Holl) and then lays out the broad brush-strokes of the building's design -- the basic procession from grassy lawn to reflecting pool and on to the chapel itself. This is a natural flow which embraces the campus while simultaneously preparing the Catholic congregation for worship.

We learn too about the building's remarkable construction; how twenty-one separate wall-panels were set and then raised into place as interlocking tablets, all in a single day. And we the chapel doors made from Alaskan cedar; Holl has a remarkable skill at designing large heavy-looking doors which are in fact light as a feather to push open. These are beautiful, hand-carved creations.
It's not until we enter the building that the building's true beauty is revealed. Time magazine described Holl recently as "the best architect working in America" and the accolade appears justified when one has the time to spend in any of his interiors. I should confess to being an enormous Holl fan -- during two series of Artland, our recent cultural road-trip through America, we visited several of Holl's creations including the fabulous Bloch Building at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas. Each one has surprised me with its tireless invention and sense of play.
Evident in the St. Ignatius chapel are the seven "bottles of light" which Holl writes about: pools of light refracted through coloured windows, a sort of re-imagining of more classical stained-glass. And consistent with the Bloch Building, it appears impossible to count the interior surfaces -- there are no two alike in the entire space.

Father Cobb talks us through the stunning font, the confessional space and explains in detail about the way the light changes in the building. More than ten years on from the chapel's inauguration, he says that he's still surprised at how the building changes throughout the day, and indeed from day to day.
The afternoon comes and we have a wedding to film. The bride and groom have kindly allowed us to film during the ceremony and the run-up to the service too. I'm rather fascinated to see that this side of the Atlantic the wedding photos take place before the ceremony. I also can't help thinking that the wedding guests must believe we're the scruffiest, laziest wedding videographers they've ever seen (particularly as we have to wrap before the exchange of vows).
Finally, there's just the opportunity to sneak round the university's art collection. Father Cobb curates the acquisitions and has built up a modest, but impeccably chosen array which is presented to be as accessible as possible for the students. I leave campus with two lovely memories; firstly, the interior of the St. Ignatius chapel, and secondly a student in the campus canteen, tucking into his lunch, perhaps regardless of the priceless Chuck Close portrait just above him. (Seb Grant)

A long way from anywhere

Sunday April 13 - Monday April 14, Cairo, Egypt
It was all going so well. Indeed it has been one of the most interesting day's filming I think I've ever done. But now it's past 11pm and the crew bus has broken down. We are 50km from Cairo, there's desert all around, and on the highway trucks thunder past. Their frequent horn blasts celebrate that they're on their way home -- and that we're not.

With our fixer Romaney and crew of four (our cameraman joins us at the location), I left Cairo yesterday morning. We first drove north, went under the Suez Canal and then down the east coast of the Red Sea before turning into the desert mountains and up to the foot of Mount Sinai. A journey of seven hours and numerous military checkpoints. Tedious as it is, there's some consolation in the notion that even well into the twentieth century making this pilgrimage took days and days on camels.

We've come to film at the Greek Orthodox monastery of St Catherine's, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian community in the world. Monks like Father Justin, our exceptional guide, have celebrated their faith here for some 1,700 years, rising each morning for prayers at 4.30am.
Sunday afternoon we recce the monastery, with Father Justin taking us around the compact site of the basilica, chapels, living quarters and a library crammed inside towering defensive walls. These were sponsored by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century CE and they include high on one side a wooden hut from which a basket could be lowered to the ground. Until the nineteenth century this was the only way in or out of what was effectively a desert fortress.
The next morning we start filming at 6am but many of the pilgrims who now come here in organised coach parties have been up since 2am, climbing to the top of Mount Sinai to worship and to see the dawn come up over the Red Sea. As we scramble around on the rocks of the valley (that's the crew below), we see the faithful straggling back, on foot and camel, ready to visit St Catherine's during the three hours that it is open to visitors on five mornings each week.
We go inside -- through a conventional door -- and spend the morning being taken around by Father Justin. Just before midday inside the main basilica we are privileged to watch, and to film, the veneration of the relics of St Catherine. What are believed to be the saint's skull and her left hand, both encased in silver reliquaries, are brought out for the faithful -- almost all from Russia -- to file past and to kiss. Many also kiss the icons of the basilica's iconostasis and all are given a silver ring by a priest to commemorate the moment. To me, this ritual, which has been taking place for a millennium and more, is simply unfathomable, but I deeply respect the importance that it has for all those taking part.
There's much that's remarkable about the building and the community: the presence of the Burning Bush, believed to be that which God used through which to speak to Moses; the presence alongside the main basilica of a mosque; the astonishing collection of icons, many of which are in the basilica but some of which are also displayed in a well-presented museum; and overall the extraordinary sense of sacred continuity.

In the afternoon we interview Father Justin in the library of St Catherine's, which contains one of the world's greatest collections of sacred manuscripts. The climate and the monastery's remoteness have ensured the survival of an astonishing number of precious manuscripts and printed books. Putting up lights here and moving around with the camera makes me as nervous as I've ever been on a shoot. I have next-to-no desire to be known as the person responsible for burning to the ground one of the world's great libraries. But all goes smoothly as Father Justin shows us an illuminated document from a Muslim Ottoman ruler granting St Catherine's the right to continue to worship within the Christian faith. He speaks movingly about the importance of the close relationship between the monks and the Muslim Bedouin with whom the monastery has lived and worked alongside for centuries. As he concludes with thoughts about how this coexistence has lessons for the world today, a mobile phone of one of the crew goes off. Grrrr. We re-take and all's well.

That is, until the breakdown nine or so hours later. Romaney gets on the phone, and although it doesn't seem as if there's an Egyptian version of the RAC, he has his son drive out from Cairo to rescue some of us and then a tow truck come for the bus. When we finally get to where we're spending the night, an ice cold beer goes down very well. (John Wyver)

Church of the Holy Fool

Tuesday April 15 - Thursday April 17, Moscow, Russia
I arrive in Moscow after a four hour flight from London in the late afternoon. It is 3 degrees, raining, and very very grey, which somehow seems appropriate. At that time of day the 40 km journey by cab into central Moscow takes three hours. I learn on arrival at the hotel (my cab driver speaks no English and I realise I have no more than six words of Russian) that this is completely normal. Rush hour traffic in Moscow is now completely out of hand with the growing population and swelling numbers who choose to travel by car.

The next morning I walk to Red Square to meet our crew outside St Basil’s Cathedral – camerman Sasha, soundman Dmitri and – equally invaluably – fixer and translator Anna.
St Basil’s, built between 1555 and 1561 to commemorate Ivan the Terrible’s victory over the Tartar Mongols in Kazan, is actually an exuberant cluster of churches, with one in the centre surrounded by eight auxiliary churches each topped with a unique onion dome. A ninth was consecrated to Moscow’s “holy fool” St Basil and built to house his grave some twenty five years later. Since then the cathedral has been popularly known by his name.

The powerfully Eastern design, with its swirling extravagant array of rainbow colours and red brick towers is completely unique. “There is nothing like it, not just in Moscow, but in all of Russia,” Anna tells me. For her, Red Square is “like stepping back in time into the old Russia. It’s one of the few places where not very much has changed.”
We go inside the cathedral and are met by our interviewee, chief curator of St Basil’s, Liubov Uspenskaya. She graduated in art history in 1964 and has worked there ever since. She is serious and direct, “a typical old-style Soviet woman” Sasha observes. Certainly she has little time for the legend that Ivan the Terrible, on seeing how beautiful the cathedral was, had its architect blinded to prevent him from building anything of comparable magnificence for anyone else. She is equally dismissive of the tale that Stalin wanted it knocked down to facilitate troop movements out of Red Square. There is, however, more substance to Napoleon reputedly ordering its destruction on discovering that he couldn’t have it taken back to Paris with him.
Inside the cathedral is small and intimate, the separate dimly-lit churches connected by narrow passageways. A highlight is the beautiful blue and gold iconostasis -- a wall of icons and religious paintings separating the nave from the altar and a distinguishing feature of all Russian orthodox churches.
Mrs Uspenskaya laments that most Muscovites see only the outside of St Basil’s. Very few bother to look inside. They have a marvel on their doorstep and yet they travel miles to visit churches in Rome and Paris.

After the interview, we go back outside for some more exterior filming under the watchful eye of a man from the Kremlin. We are being charged a staggering £450 per hour for permission to film in Red Square. Even though we paid upfront for two hours, he seems restless after ninety minutes and suddenly orders us to stop. I protest at the obvious unfairness, but Anna says we must accept it. “You cannot argue with these people. They are very difficult.”
Time then for an extremely late lunch. I ask the Russian crew, out of curiosity, what they make of the Litvinenko poisoning in London. Dmitri, the sound recordist, tells me he has recently spent two weeks filming Andrei Lugovoi (wanted by British police on suspicion of the murder) at close quarters for a documentary. “What kind of man did he strike you as?” I ask. “Very clever, very successful, very well connected and utterly insistent that he is innocent,” Dmitri replies. Hmmm. It seems then as though we’ll never know. (Linda Zuck)

In the shadow of the Gherkin

Wednesday April 9 - Thursday April 10, London, England
I'm in the City of London walking round in circles in the shadow of Lord Foster's 30 St Mary's Axe (more commonly known as the Gherkin), and I'm struggling to find Bevis Marks, the oldest synagogue in Great Britain.

My poor map-reading is not entirely to blame. When the synagogue's building contract was signed on the February 12 1699 Jews were not permitted to build on the public thoroughfare, and consequently the synagogue was built in a discreet "open yard" just off what in now Bevis Marks Street.
Several calls to the cameraman later and we've found one another, the synagogue and also Maurice Bitton. Maurice is the building's curator and a lifelong worshipper at the synagogue. He recalls his Bar Mitzvah here as well as attending Schul with his father when he was only five years old. He now lives adjacent to the building and Bevis Marks seems very much in his life-blood. The interview is scheduled for the next day and today we have about five hours to film the building itself.
As is the case with buildings in the rest of the series, the synagogue looks unlike any other which we've visited previously. It possesses none of the rugged compactness of the Old New Synagogue in Prague nor the splendour of the Dohany in Budapest. Rather it has an elegance and reserve which feels distinctly Protestant -- an impression confirmed by the large bay windows which flood the building with natural light.

The explanation for this aesthetic could be down to the master builder, Joseph Avis, a Quaker carpenter who had previously worked with Christopher Wren on St Bride's in Fleet Street. But there are other influences too, most notably the Spanish and Portugese Great Synagogue in Amsterdam (which seats 1,500 to Bevis Marks' 500)
The interior is also very straightforward and includes the oldest Cromwellian benches still in use today, pleasingly crafted in dark oak. Dramatic candelabras plunge down from the ceiling and Maurice tells us that when lit, the effect can be breathtaking, particularly for evening weddings. We spend the day there and enjoy the building's restful aura and straightforward surroundings. (Perhaps Ian enjoys it slightly less, as he's the one doing all the work.)

The following morning and we've arranged to meet teacher Aysha Khanom and pupils from Halley Primary School who will be given a tour around the synagogue by Maurice. The children, perhaps a dozen in total, behave impeccably throughout the hour or so which we're with them, and ask the questions which many adults might shirk from: "Why do men and women sit in different parts of the synagogue? Where are the pictures of Jesus?" The children are mostly Muslim and they are respectful, polite and sensitive to this sacred place -- I can't remember filming with a more lovely or lively bunch of schoolkids. If anyone from Halley School is reading this -- they are a credit to the school.

Maurice too should be commended for admirably fielding the children's questions, and later on, some of mine. He knows the building inside out and has done a fair bit of television, not the least of which was taking the part of the Synagogue Beadle in the BBC's adaptation of Daniel Deronda. He offers a history of the building as well as explaining its role within the community. Interestingly, he says that a gentle revival is happenning. The synagogue has been rejuvenated by a young rabbi who is attracting many of the local Jewish city workers and once again the building is becoming popular as a regular place of worship.

It's our final location for the Judaism film and somehow appropriate. Masada, Budapest, New York, Czech Republic, Philadelphia, and now a building about 15 minutes from our offices. Or about two hours if you were to rely on my directions. (Seb Grant)

All about Cuthbert

Tuesday March 25 - Thursday March 27, Durham, England

Associate producer Lucie Conrad joins the Art of Faith team for our shoot in Durham Cathedral:
The first thing that struck me when travelling up to Durham was how friendly Northerners are -- and how talkative! I spent the entire train journey trying to block out the voice of a fellow traveller recounting her life story to her poor neighbour as well as the packed train carriage. I must say I was relieved when I heard Durham announced on the tannoy. And then there was Durham Cathedral, towering over the city. I was here to join Ian to film the main features of the cathedral as well as to interview a member of its congregation.
When I arrived at the cathedral, having been taken there by another very chatty taxi driver, I was greeted by Ian and John, Head Porter at Durham Cathedral. John is quite obviously an old hand at filming and with his help and expertise our shoot went extremely smoothly.

We went first to the small Cathedral Museum which houses the remains of St Cuthbert’s coffin as well as other extremely valuable artefacts taken from his shrine. Durham Cathedral, you see, is all about St Cuthbert -- as I would find out the following day when we met our interviewee, Lilian Groves, Head Steward and a fountain of knowledge on Durham’s history. Lilian used to lecture at Durham University but retired in the early nineties. Since then, she tells us, she spends every waking hour at the Cathedral. As she begins to talk her eyes fill with tears and I can see that she is clearly deeply connected with this place. And once Lilian begins to speak it’s quite hard to stop her. There is so much information stored inside her that’s bursting to be communicated.
The most important thing she tells us is Durham’s connection with St Cuthbert. The Cathedral simply wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for him. Cuthbert was originally buried in Lindisfarne in 687 CE, and was then declared a saint when his body was dug up eleven years after his death and found to be completely intact. A shrine was set up in Lindisfarne, but soon the Lindisfarne community came under threat from the Vikings and they decided to start a journey to find a new home for Cuthbert’s shrine. Eventually they settled on Dun Holm, the current site of Durham Cathedral.
It is only really when you get inside this glorious Norman building that you realise quite how large the cathedral is. The thing that immediately struck me was the beautiful proportions of this building and its enormous pillars, some of which are engraved in a very unusual manner. Lilian told us how these pillars were carved by highly skilled masons and put together like a jigsaw puzzle. They are hollow inside but full of rubble. Lilian’s theory is that these stones are in fact of the original Saxon church which was built to house Cuthbert’s shrine, as no rubble was ever found at the cathedral site. Lilian also has plenty of other interesting things to tell us, including the fact that Durham’s nave ceiling has the first stone vault in the world.
One tends to think of places of pilgrimage as medieval ideas but we soon discover quite how present this idea is at Durham Cathedral. Lilian stresses more than once that this is a working building, not a museum. And so it is with dozens of busy Stewards in their red and purple gowns taking groups of students or members of the public around their beloved building. On several occasions our filming endeavours were set to clash with such group talks. But not for a moment was there a doubt about who would give way to whom. In Durham the Stewards rule. But with the help of the charming John, the shoot went smoothly, and Ian and I set off happily on our way back to London. (Lucie Conrad)

Welcome to Toxteth

Sunday March 16 - Monday March 17, Liverpool, England
When Ian & I first reached Princes Road Synagogue in the car, we went straight past it. It was only on the second drive along Princes Road that we realised we must have found our (unnamed) building. With rows of lofty Victorian terrace houses and deserted husks of houses of worship of various dominations, Princes Road in Toxteth, Liverpool, wistfully communicates a sense of a more prosperous era long since past. Nestled amongst all these houses and battered old churches, Princes Road Synagogue is initially somewhat unremarkable. The façade has character and contains notable elements reminiscent of the Dohany Street Synagogue or Central Synagogue New York, but on this run down street it seems somewhat muted.
Enter the synagogue, however, and a completely different visual experience is revealed. Princes Road Synagogue is like a small, beautifully vibrant and stylistically busy Dohany Street Synagogue. With one gallery and no central row of candelabras, the synagogue contains unique choir stalls perched above a stunning Byzantine-style Ark with a deep blue cupola, beautiful rose windows and an extraordinary variety of patterns on the walls and ceilings.
On Sunday we had little time to appreciate such detail however as we tip-toed around the galleries in order to film shots of a civic ceremony that was taking place below us that afternoon. The synagogue was packed with their congregation and various dignitaries of Liverpool, including the Lord Mayor and his entourage. We snuck around filming shots of a busy congregation and readings accompanied by melodious singing from the uniquely mixed choir, as conducted by our interviewee, Naomi Hoyland. In the last section of the ceremony Ian and I managed to creep up the small spiral staircase leading up to the choir stalls and grab some shots of Naomi conducting as the choir sungs their hearts out. Before we knew it the service was over and Eddie the caretaker was keen to lock up for the night.
Early the next morning we set about filming with Naomi, as she told us the story of how the synagogue came to be, who frequented it, its situation today and her own connections with the building. The synagogue had originally been created in the nineteenth-century for the wealthy Jews in Liverpool who wanted a grand synagogue to match their status -- the existing one in town was not opulent enough and anyway they wanted one nearer their smart homes. A competition was held and two Scottish architects, the Audsley brothers, won the commission. They had also built the Welsh Presbyterian Church on the other side of the street – which now very sadly sits as a Gothic shell, falling down and bordered up. The congregation all put in what money they could afford to fund the new building – as two plaques in the lobby attest. The Audsley brothers apparently travelled the world picking out beautiful and eclectic designs which they blended together for the interior of the synagogue. The congregation had never seen anything liked it and loved it!

Naomi Hoyland has attended the synagogue every Saturday since she was three years old. Her father and uncle had attended Princes Road since they were teens and when they discovered at the start of the Second World War that a bout of rhumatic fever counted them out of going to fight, they used their time wisely, acting as ARP officers and building up the Synagogue choir with members of their own family, including the very young Naomi. She and her cousin never left the choir and introduced their equally musical children to it from a very young age. The two of them now share the duties of conducting the choir and both are passionate about the survival of the choir, as well as of the building itself.
One of the most interesting moments during my interview was learning that the number of Jews in Liverpool is declining. All the children move out to Manchester and elsewhere. The ever-dwindling number of Jews makes it very difficult to maintain the synagogue (which is now a Grade I listed building) and sustain the congregation. It's for this reason that Naomi took on the task of synagogue tour guide, so that she can introduce to new people this wonderful building. She also showed me two beautiful lectern-chairs on the pulpit that her father had crafted for the synagogue several years ago, when he was 91. Seeing those two chairs and hearing about his life’s work for the synagogue, it gives me faith that Naomi Hoyland and passionate congregants like her are not going to let Princes Road Synagogue fall into the decline that has afflicted the other religious buildings on Princes Road. (Nonie Creagh-Brown)

"When I work, I believe in God"

Thursday March 13 - Saturday March 15, Cote d'Azur, France

Two days in the south of France to film at one remarkable location whilst gale force winds and rain batter Britain. What’s not to like?
Vence, half an hour inland from Nice, is lesser-known that its close neighbour St Paul de Vence. It’s a real bustling town (unlike St Paul, which has become a medieval theme park overrun by tourist hordes and souvenir tat). Henri Matisse’s modernist Chapel of Our Lady of the Rosary is on the hill overlooking Vence’s Roman walls. Uniquely, its creation was the first time that an artist entirely designed every detail of a monument, from the architecture to the furniture, the candlesticks and even the priest’s robes. As such it is a sacred art monument. For Matisse, “this work required me four years of an exclusive and tireless effort and it is the fruit of my whole working life. In spite of all its imperfections, I consider it my masterpiece”.

Artists have famously been drawn to this area in the hills above Nice since the 1920s and a heyday period saw Matisse, Braque, Calder, Leger, Picasso and Picabia amongst others dine regularly at a local hotel where famously meals were often paid for with canvasses.
Matisse settled in Nice in 1942 and a few months later, fearing a wartime evacuation, moved to Vence. He was 73 and in poor health recovering from intestinal surgery. For a couple of weeks he was looked after by a young nurse, Monique Bourgeois, with whom he struck up a friendship. She subsequently became a nun -- Sister Jacques-Marie -- and their friendship continued. In the local convent the nuns had no chapel and were using makeshift quarters in a garage with a leaky roof. When Matisse learned of this, after extensive discussions, he offered to design a chapel in the detail of which he immersed himself, beginning in 1947.
From the outside, the discrete chapel, used daily by both the nuns and the local community, can only be recognised by its blue and white roof tiles and wrought iron cross of crescent moons and golden flames. Inside, everything is white – walls, ceilings, doors, except for the yellow, green and ultramarine of the semi-abstract stained glass windows.

Most tourists only take a few minutes to visit the chapel, as it is quite small. But you really need to spend time in it, if you can, to experience the extraordinary way the sun floods through the windows, bathing it in colour as it moves round from the south-east to the south-west, creating changing patterns of reflected pools of colour on the white marble floor and the walls.
Our interviewee, Dominican Sister Marie-Pierre, still marvels at this changing play of light throughout the day and explains the use of just three chosen colours: blue, to represent the sea and the sky, green (nature) and yellow (the light of the sun and god). Crucially, the blue and green glass is transparent whilst Matisse agonised over finding the right opaque yellow glass before he was satisfied. Because yellow is associated with the creator and we cannot see God with our eyes, it would not have been appropriate for yellow to be reflected inside the chapel. The green and blue, however, reflect as green and violet, because intriguingly the red of the sun combines with the blue glass to form violet.
Sister Marie-Pierre tells us that when the chapel was consecrated in 1951 many of the sisters were at first deeply shocked by Matisse’s three ceramic murals, in particular by the Stations of the Cross on the end wall. These looked to them like badly scrawled images, but in time they got used to his radical drawing style. She also relates that Picasso was very jealous of his friend’s achievement. She doesn’t like to speculate on whether Matisse, a presumed atheist, became religious, quoting only the artist’s own reflections on his creative powers: “When I work, I believe in God”

She finds the chapel’s beauty, simplicity and serenity highly conducive to prayer. I ask her if she misses the decoration and trappings of a traditional church. “Why would I?” she replies with some bafflement. “We have everything we need here. Matisse really gave us a wonderful gift.” She is certainly right about that.

Filming completed, there’s just time for a drink at that hotel, the Colombe d’Or, to admire some more Matisses, amongst other great artworks, and to see photos of him on the hotel terrace from those extraordinary years. No culinary splendours to write about this time. We could only afford an aperitif, but I’m not asking for sympathy, as it came with toasted almonds, olives and top quality charcuterie. (Linda Zuck)