Collage 134

Lynn brought in a small stack of stencils. I particularly like this star-shaped one. Isn't the red star a symbol of Soviet Russia? I spent a summer in the USSR in 1981 as a college student. I bought an Army cap with the red star - my family was worried that I might become a defector or something. That never happened, of course. I bought the text we are using on that trip. The cap is long-gone, but the book has been waiting all these years to come alive in a whole new way.

I don't resonate with any of the characters in this book. I wish I did. Pierre is so pathetic; he annoys me. Here is a description of him from page 308. "Pierre, who, on his wife's orders, had let his hair grow long and removed his spectacles, was fashionably dressed, but walked about the rooms with a sad and dejected air. As everywhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of people who bowed before his wealth, and treated him with a habitual lordliness and absentminded disdain." I feel for him, but want to shake him and say -- be strong! -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 275-276
collage, acrylic paint, stencil
made 6/25/10