With the summer season just around the corner, I am presenting four new works for the month of June from the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection on the always popular pastoral theme of the Good Shepherd. Japanese Master Printmaker Sadao Watanabe offers an Asian variation on Christ's Parable of the Lost Sheep, showing the Good Shepherd returning the stray to the fold in a stencil print on Japanese paper. Georgia-based Painter Mary Padgelek gives us an abstract representational image of a sheep-herder with the Greek inscription, "I am the Good Shepherd," in a giclee print from a series on the seven claims Jesus made about himself in the Gospel of John. Graphic artist Sandra Bowden from New England has created the mixed media collagraph, Psalm XXIII, combining an early Christian sculpture of the Good Shepherd with the partly concealed texts of the Hebrew version of the much-loved psalm and the title page of American Composer Leonard Bernstein’s musical setting of Psalm 23. The last in the quartet of images for June is a rough-hewn, cast bronze sculpture of Christ leading his flock (above) by Bulgarian Artist Nikola Litchkov, which can be viewed along with the other new art pieces in The Good Shepherd gallery of the Themes of Faith section. The Sacred Art Pilgrim will be taking to the road next month, returning with new sacred art treasures in August. (John Kohan)
