February 28,  2000                       The Report 

A toast to St. Benedict
by Kelly Torrance

  •  Vancouver artist Padam spent two years as an artist in residence at Mission's Benedictine monastery, so it is only fitting that of 250 submission, his won the French liqueur Benedictine's recent log-design contest. Padam, born Morley Wiseman 64 years ago in Saskatchewan, left the cloister in 1983. Afterwards, “I began to express artistically what I had experienced in the monastery.” One of those pieces was a life-sized bust of St. Benedict, the founder of the order that formulated the liqueur. His prize winning entry incorporated it in a rainbow logo with the slogan, “A Head of its Time." A former member of the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Padam paints, sculpts, teaches ballet and instructs figure skaters. He will fly to France in March to collect his US$10,000 prize. He plans to use the cash to buy software to produce art on his computer and improve his Russian; he has four bronzes on display in a St. Petersburg museum and has been invited back. “By the time I pay back my friends for having to support me,”he chuckles, “there won't be much left.”