VANCOUVER • An
eclectic Vancouver artist know as Padam has won $15,000 by creating
a distinctly spiritual new face for a famous 500-year-old French
liqueur, Benedictine.
Padam's multiple images of the hooded head of
St. Benedict, the founder of the religious order after whom the
liqueur is named, was chosen as the best of 250 submissions in
a global logo-design contest sponsored by Benedictine, whose recipe
was concocted by a monk during the Renaissance.
“ The people at Benedictine's wanted their
image of the new millennium to pertain to St. Benedict and refer
to the agelessness of the Benedictine order. A lot of the other
entries didn't really do that — so that might be why I won,”
said Padam, whose given name is Morley Wiseman.
“ It was a great 2000 surprise when I was
told on New Year's Day that I'd won this. It's nice to be appreciated
with a monetary award,” said Padam, a former dancer with
the National Ballet of Canada and who now paints ,sculpts and
teaches.
The 64-year-old Padam came to create the new
logo for Benedictine, one of the most expensive liqueurs in the
world, after a convoluted artistic and personal religious journey.
He was raised a Roman Catholic in Saskatchewan
and spent two years in the early 1980's as artist-in-residence
at a Benedictine-run monastery in Mission, B.C. He is now a spiritual
teacher within the movement begun by Rajneesh, but he doesn't
see any contradiction between his so-called New Age beliefs and
his admiration for the early Christian leader.
