Looking back on ten years of sacred art collecting, I have a delightful image of Noah's Ark to present this week from Haiti, made from an unusual material—recycled oil drums. The unknown creator of this playful piece of Noah adrift with his animals works with 55 gallon barrels, collected from the harbor of the capital of Port-du-Prince. Haitian metalworkers…
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We move on this week to a work illustrating another foundational narrative from the Book of Genesis by an "Outsider Artist" well represented in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection--Myrtice West. The Alabama-based painter gives us a panoramic view in her characteristic naif style of the animals gathered two by two to enter Noah's…
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Adam and Eve have returned this week in a charming folk art piece, typical of another tradition of artisan art, represented in the Schools of Sacred Art listings of the on-line Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection--the reversed glass icons of Romania. When the Transylvanian regions of this East European nation were joined to the…
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As we continue this 10th anniversary survey of pieces in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, I'm featuring another work this week depicting the Creation story in the Book of Genesis--this time by an unknown textile artist from the Kuna People, who live in the San Blas Archipelago off the northwestern coast of Panama. I have set myself two guidelines…
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The majority of artworks I have collected during the past ten years deal with sacred stories of the Judeo-Christian tradition mostly found in the Bible. It seems appropriate, then, to start my survey of artists and artworks in the Sacred Art Pilgrim collection with the embossed collagraph print from Massachusetts Artist Sandra Bowden, In the Beginning Was the Word. …
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What better way to launch my 10th anniversary on-line show of Sacred Art Pilgrim acquisitions than with a look back at the artwork that began it all--the oil on paper mounted on canvas painting, Christ et docteur, from 1937 by French Artist Georges Rouault, the unrivalled master of contemporary sacred art! This powerful image of Christ's nighttime meeting with…
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This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. In celebration of this milestone, I want to take a look back at this decade of art collecting and feature one work by one art-maker currently in the Sacred Artist or Schools of Sacred Art listings once a week for the next twelve months. My 2019 retrospective…
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"Less is more" is the mantra of German Designer Oliver Fabel, who created this week's new manger scene in a minimalist style from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. With the exception of the cradle and the Baby Jesus, the other "figures" in this Christmas display are similar-sized wooden blocks, resembling pieces in a Jenga game, with printed labels to…
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Chinese artisans at the Dongyang Christian Woodcarving Factory in the coastal province of Zhejiang created this week's new Christmas display from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, carrying on a folk art tradition, dating back some 1,300 years to the Tang Dynasty. The workshop is the only one of its kind in China, founded by Master Woodcarver Zhang Wan Long,…
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To celebrate the Season of Advent this year, I will be adding new manger displays from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection to the Nativity Sets and Scenes page of the Schools of Sacred Art section in the weeks leading up to Christmas. My first offering is an 18-piece ensemble of colored, cut-out figures,…
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Humor is generally in short supply in religious works of art, so, the last of the three artists to be featured this month is a welcome addition to the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. London-born Irish Artist Brian Whelan combines the sacred and the mundane, the cosmic and the comic in idiosyncratic creations that no less a sacred art critic…
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This week's new addition to my Sacred Artists listings can truly be called an artist of the Global Village. Wayne Forte was born in the Philippines, raised and educated in Southern California, and married in Brazil, studying and making art, as well, in France and Italy. The artist’s Asian heritage is reflected in…
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In the weeks leading up to the Advent season, I will be offering profiles of three art-makers now joining my Sacred Artists listings, whose distinctive cultural backgrounds and global views greatly add to the diversity of the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. This week's new Artist in Profile has the distinction of being the first in my collection to come…
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We leave politics and current affairs behind and enter the world of commerce with this week's new face of Jesus from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. The conservative Protestant faith community where I grew up frowned on holy relics, but this faux wood, bakelite plaque with a reproduction of Warner Sallman's famous Head of Christ fills that kind of…
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Czech Graphic Artist Jan Krejci offers us another "politicized" face of Jesus from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection--not a Savior of the World who is the target of bullets like the Sviatoslav Vladyka Christ of Our Freedom we just considered but the gun-toting Jesus bristling with cartridge belts of this week's featured ex libris caricature. Ever since the Emperor…
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We looked last week at a variation of “Behold the Man” imagery, where Christ was posed against a police line-up wall. My new face of Jesus from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection for this week, acquired on a recent trip to Ukaine, is also linked to contemporary issues. It reminds us of Christ’s parting promise to be with his…
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My latest face of Jesus is a strikingly unconventional variation on the “Behold the Man” motif we looked at last week. This portrait of the humiliated Christ, posed against a police line-up wall, is the work of Pennsylvania Icon-maker Jack Pachuta, who illustrates prayer cards for distribution among prisoners. A devout Roman Catholic, Pachuta wanted to do volunteer work…
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There is a different kind of portrait of Christ in his Passion on display this week from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection that is often distinguishable from Man of Sorrows imagery only in its title: "Ecce Homo" or "Behold the Man." While Man of Sorrows portraits are more timeless images of the Suffering Christ that may include the wounds…
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I have other variations of Christ portraiture related to his Passion to present in my series on new faces of Jesus in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. We will look this week at a genre of imagery known as the Man of Sorrows, depicting Christ wearing a crown of thorns, often stripped to the waist and displaying his wounds,…
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I have yet a third image of the Veil of Veronica face of Jesus from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection to present this week. It comes from an usual source--Japanese Printmaker Sadao Watanabe. The leading Japanese Christian artist of the 20th century found faith through a church founded by American Protestant missionaries and the overwhelming majority of his sacred…
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I have another variation on the Veil of Veronica face of Jesus to present this week from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. The featured linocut by German Printmaker Otto Schubert depicts the moment in sacred story when the pious woman of Jerusalem who wiped the face of Christ as he carried his cross to Calvary looks down in wonderment…
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Just as the Eastern Orthodox venerate icons of The Savior Made Without Hands, Western Christians have their own miraculous image of Christ on a cloth, known as the Veil of Veronica, the subject of this week's new face of Jesus from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. The origin of this supernatural portrait of Christ is remembered in the Sixth…
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In my continuing series on new faces of Jesus in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, I have a second icon of the Savior Made Without Hands to display this week by another representative of the new school of iconography in Lviv, Ukraine. Arsen Bereza works with "found objects," painting his version of the miraculous image of Christ sent to…
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My travels last month took me to Lviv, Ukraine, where I found this week's featured face of Jesus at an exhibit of recent works by Ulyana Tomkevych at the ICONART Contemporary Sacred Art Gallery. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic icon-maker offers us a striking contemporary variation in the round on an ancient prototype of a miraculous image of Jesus known…
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This Sunday marks the start of my next on-line art series, Faces of Jesus, featuring new portraits of Christ from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection. During the next two months, we will be exploring how this foundational subject of Christian art has been redefined by a mix of international artists, working in styles modern and traditional. If you have…
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The universal church appears once more as a ship at sea offering salvation in this week's new artwork from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, the last nautical-themed piece I have to present for the month of June. It is a glazed tile in the cloisonne style from the famous De Porceleyne Fles earthenware factory in Delft, commemorating the First…
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As we journey by boat through the month of June, I have a second book plate print of Noah's Ark to present this week by another East European graphic artist. Serbian Printmaker Budimir Dimitrijevic shows us the famous biblical craft long after its landing on Mount Ararat. Serenely set in a garden where birds build their nests, the landlocked…
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As we continue our survey of nautical-themed images in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, I have a book plate from Ukraine to show this week, depicting the greatest sea-faring tale of them all: the story of Noah's Ark. In this culture-bending variation from Ukrainian Graphic Artist Sergey Kirnitskiy, Noah appears to have made a far-easterly detour on his way…
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With the summer season soon upon us, I have selected new images from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection for the month of June on the theme of Psalm 107:23 (KJV): "they that go down to the sea in ships." My first nautically-inspired artwork is another of Russian-Ukrainian Printmaker Konstantin Kalynovych's symbol-laden book plates, depicting two sailing vessels that are…
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My art festival of new Marian images for the month of May from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection comes to a close this week with a splendid new icon of the Madonna and Child by Ukrainian Greek Catholic Artist Lyuba Yatskiv. The icon-maker from Lviv in West Ukraine offers us a contemporary variation on the time-honored iconographic prototype of…
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In my series for the month of May on new Marian images in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, we travel east from Mexico to Puerto Rico this week to view two serigraphs by Puerto Rican graphic artists showing the Virgin of Monserrat, one of the most popular themes of the island's saint-making wood carvers. This manifestation of the Mother…
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My survey of new images of the Virgin Mary in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection takes us this week to the Mexican village of Xalitla and the Lorenzo Family, noted for their sacred artworks in acrylic on masonite panels resembling amate paper paintings. Lucas, the family patriarch, and his son, Jesus, offer us two variations in a naif folk…
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May is the time of year to remember the Virgin Mary. During the next four weeks, I will be presenting new images of the Mother of Christ from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection in an eclectic mix of styles and media by international artists, underscoring the global popularity of Marian-themed sacred art. My first offering is an image of…
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Mississippi Artist Carl Dixon created this week's new art offering from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection especially for the 2018 Lenten art exhibition, Exodus: Journeys of Liberation, at the gallery of St. Philip Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio. It brings together the themes we have been considering this month. At the center of his carved wood panel painting, Christ…
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Fifty years ago this month, American Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. To honor this fourth generation Baptist minister from Georgia who was inspired by his Christian faith to struggle for racial equality by non-violent means, I have two new color viscosity prints by American Graphic Artist Tyrus Clutter to present…
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On this second Sunday after Easter, I have a book plate print to show by Czech Graphic Artist Karel Musil, presenting the Resurrection of Christ in a way familiar to all Western Christians. In the earliest depictions of what happened on Easter Sunday like the Eastern-rite image of the Myrrhbearers we saw last week from Ukrainian Greek Catholic Iconographer…
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Christian is risen! He is risen, indeed! This traditional greeting can be heard this Sunday as Eastern Orthodox Christians around the globe celebrate Easter. The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection offer no real description of Christ rising from the dead. During the next two weeks, we will look at the differences in Eastern and Western imagery of the event…
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As we begin Holy Week, my Lenten series on new images from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection illustrating seven moments from the Passion of Christ comes to end with an abstract expressionist image of the Crucifixion by French Master Printmaker Alfred Manessier. This color lithograph is the fourth plate in a suite of seven prints Manessier created in 1949…
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American Graphic Artist Tyrus Clutter created this week's new image from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, recalling a moment in Christ's journey to Calvary not found in the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion but commemorated in the Roman Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross. At the sixth "stop" in this traditional cycle of fourteen prayers remembering the…
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We travel this week to the San Blas Archipelago off the Caribbean Coast of Panama for our next new Lenten image from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, depicting the fifth of seven moments from the Passion story, when Christ takes up the Cross to follow the Way of Sorrow to Calvary. This image of Jesus struggling under his heavy…
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We turn this week to Frank Brangwyn, another modern British master of sacred art, for the fourth in our series of new works from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection depicting seven moments from the Passion of Christ. The multi-talented, Belgian-born, Roman Catholic artist created this hand-colored lithographic reproduction of a chalking drawing he made in 1912, combining two popular…
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British Artist Peter Howson created this week's new illustration in pastel from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection of the third of seven moments from the Passion of Christ, which we will be considering during the Lenten Season. A master of the mob scene, the Glasgow-based draughtsman gives us a timeless variation on Christ's arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane,…
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As we make our way through the Season of Lent, looking at new works from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collectin, depicting seven moments in the Passion of Christ, my art offering this week from Cypriot Iconographer Charalambos Epaminonda shows Jesus praying in Gethsemane, a theme known in Western religious art as the Agony in the Garden. Epaminonda is a…
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Four new scenes from the Life of Christ, painted on parchment, have just been added to the Ethiopian Icons gallery in the Schools of Art section. I don't know the name of the artist who created these beautiful pieces, but they are clearly by a different hand than the other sacred images in my Ethiopian art collection. This folk…
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