As we prepare for the season of Advent, my art selections for November depict the Annunciation, the prequel to the Christmas story, when the Angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary in the first chapter of Luke to tell her she has been chosen by God to be the mother of the Messiah. This trio of artworks by international artists offers a preview of images from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection, featured in the exhibition, "Blessed Among Women:" The Annunciation in Contemporary Art, opening early next year at the Marian Library at the University of Dayton in Ohio. Playing with time-honored symbols in religious art, Italian-Brazilian Artmaker Pietro Cenini suggests the event simply by showing the lily held by Gabriel and the blue-veil and white lace robe of Mary in a giclee reproduction of a photograph. The heavenly news is represented by a jewel-encrusted sunburst in British Mixed Media Artist Stephen MacPhail's found-object assemblage piece on marble. Italian Painter Paolo Perfranceschi presents the Annunciation as a divine interruption into the daily routine of modern life, characterized by times of idle waiting, with his oil on canvas image (above) of Gabriel appearing to a pandemic-era, business suited Mary with guard dog on a suburban commuter train platform. The tile, Ecce Ancilla Domini, the Latin for the soon-to-be Virgin Mother's response to the angel--"Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord"--is sprayed as graffiti on blocks at the bottom of the painting. The partly obscured name of the station in French can be translated as "Good News." (John Kohan)