We travel this week to Bulgaria to meet Nikola and Milen Litchkov, a father and son with a small family gallery in the capital city of Sofia who make sacred art. Father Nikola’s sculptures combine the raw expressiveness and rounded solidity of the French early modern masters, Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol, with the Socialist Realism in which he was schooled in the Communist era. His cast-metal pieces in the Collection show roughly-finished figures gathered en masse to watch unfolding sacred dramas, melded into a single form with emotive variations. Son Milen works not with broad gestures but details, creating finely rendered linocuts, drypoints, and etchings that pay homage to the artistic heritage of 1000 years of Christianity in Bulgaria. Mixing the traditional styling of miniature icons and illuminated manuscripts with folk art motifs, the younger Litchkov has created enough graphic works on religious themes to illustrate a Bible! A varied sampling of this Bulgarian family's sacred art pieces can now be viewed on the Nikola and Milen Litchkov profile page in the Sacred Artists section. (John Kohan)