We travel north from the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine to the Lublin region of Poland to find this week's example of wooden art, now on view on the East European Wood Carvings page in the Schools of Sacred Art Section. The painted carved wood sculpture, Jesus Proclaims the Kingdom of God, is the work of Polish Folk Artist Roman Sledz. A onetime tractor drive and construction worker, he cut out his first wood image of a human face when he was 20, after reading a newspaper account of two local brothers who made good as wood carvers, and is now a recognized name among international folk art collectors. Sledz brings an expressive realism to his gouged out faces with their paint-dot eyes and slanting pencil-line brows. His sacred scenes have an emotional immediacy conveyed by the sharp-edged marks of his cutting tools and stray paint blotches on bare wood, as we see in this multi-figured carving of the Sermon on the Mount. Sledz places two white-robed children front and center"for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 9: 14, KJV.)" (John Kohan)