Collage 198

Team Tolstoy is preparing for our first show in December. We will be exhibiting the first 300 or so collages at Atlantic Works Gallery in East Boston. We are lining up other exciting venues but this will be our first and we are all looking forward to it. We only wish that Otto could fly in from Berlin! But we envision lots of other future shows which hopefully he can attend.

This project will be featured in a regional New England art magazine in November, in anticipation of the show in December. However, as these things can be a little fluid, I won't say too much until the issue is in publication. Stand by!

One of the many decisions we need to make is which image to use for the postcard invitation. The core team has 7 members, so it's hard to decide which single image to select. Everyone is so modest and defers to the rest of the group. So we decided to ask our readers -- which is your favorite image to date? We will choose in a truly collaborative way -- by including our readers in this selection process. Please comment back to the blog! -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 403-404 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/13/10

Collage 197

On these pages, Pierre is reflecting on his failed marriage to Helene as well as his duel with Dolokhov. Of all the characters, Tolstoy seems to give the most attention to Pierre's internal dialogues. He really tries to explore Pierre's inner world, much as a psychotherapist would.

"Who's right, and who's wrong? No one. You're alive -- so live: tomorrow you'll die, just as I could have died an hour ago. And is it worth suffering, when there's only a second left to live compared with eternity?" -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 401-402 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/13/10

Collage 196

Emma and I were in the studio together the day I made this piece. I often wonder if the color palette is influenced by the weather and season. We were into some luscious greens that day. I was following her lead with the design, the long sweeping swath of green with gold dots.

On these pages of the original text, Pierre has just shot and seriously wounded Dolokhov in a duel. It is an opportunity for Tolstoy to show us a "softer" side of Dolokhov, the bad boy. "Dolokhov, this towdy duelist, lived in Moscow with his old mother and hunchbacked sister, and was a most affectionate son and brother." In the next scene, Pierre is ruminating about why he married Helene -- he realizes that he never loved her, that she was just a trophy wife -- and recalls how his wife's brother, Anatole, would try to borrow money from her and kiss her bare shoulders. She didn't let him borrow money, but did allow him to kiss her. Are we to read that as an incestuous relationship?!! -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 399-400 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/13/10

Collage 195

This scene describes the duel between Pierre and Dolokhov. I was inspired by the word "paces" when I read that the two men are six paces apart as Pierre shoots Dolokhov.

Reading the book is going well for me. It is a slow process but I am really enjoying it. I am reading a version that Lynn found from 1949. It has some lovely illustrations and perfectly aged pages which makes it even more enjoyable to read! --Emma

Emma Rhodes
from page 397-398 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/13/10

Collage 194

This is the scene where Pierre challenges Dolokhov to a duel. He suspects that Dolokhov had an affair with his wife Helene. It was never clear to me whether that was really the case. I was struck by how foolish this was -- Pierre had never before handled a firearm! He asks his second, Nesvitsky, "Only tell me, where am I to go and where am I to shoot?" he said with an unnaturally meek smile. He took the pistol in his hands and began asking how to pull the trigger, because until then he had never handled a pistol, something that he did not want to admit... --Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 395-396 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/13/10

Collage 193

Lynn Waskelis
made from page 393-394 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
8/6/10

found on pages 312-313 of Pevear/Volokhonsky translation

"Well, now to the health of beautiful women," said Dolokhov, and with a serious expression, but with a smile at the corners of his mouth, he turned to Pierre, glass in hand. "To the health of beautiful women, Petrusha, and of their lovers," he said...

Pierre looked at Dolokhov, the pupils of his eyes sank: the something terrible and ugly that had sickened him during dinner rose up and took possession of him. He leaned his entire corpulent body across the table...

Dolokhov looked at Pierre with his light, merry, cruel eyes, and with the same smile, as if saying: "Ah, this is what I like."

Collage 192

Here I'm using materials from the art museum in Bangalore, India. The name of the museum is Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath. I bought a big stack of lovely reproductions when I went there in February. One of our "rules" is that we try to avoid buying anything for this project. Most of it comes from yard sales or donations. This is one of the exceptions. I also used fragments of a pronunciation guide. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 391-392 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/6/10

Collage 191

Lynn Waskelis
made from page 389-390 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
8/6/10

found in pages 308-310 of Pevear/Volokhonsky translation

Count Ilya Andreich, again pushing through the crowd, left the drawing room and came back a moment later with another steward, carrying a large silver platter, which he offered to Prince Bagration. On the platter lay verses composed and printed in honor of the hero. Seeing the platter, Bagration glanced fearfully around, as if looking for help. But all eyes were demanding that he submit. Feeling himself in their power, Bagration resolutely took the platter in both hands and looked angrily and reproachfully at the count who had offered it to him. Someone obligingly took the platter from Bagration's hands (otherwise he seemed prepared to hold it that way till evening and go to the table with it), and drew his attention to the verses. "Well, so I'll read them," Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing his weary eyes on the paper, he began to read with a concentrated and serious look.

Collage 190

The scene is a meeting at the English Club in Moscow, Volume II, Part One, Chapter III. There are various circles of people discussing different topics. The book started like this, in the drawing room of Anna Pavlovna. Tolstoy uses this device frequently so the reader can access many points of view. We again meet up with Pierre. "Pierre, who, on his wife's orders, had let his hair grow long and removed his spectacles, was fashionably dressed, but walked about the room with a sad and dejected air. As everywhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of people who bowed before his wealth, and he treated them with a habitual lordliness and absentminded disdain. By his age he should have been with the young people, but by his wealth and connections he was a member of the circle of old, venerable guests, and therefore he kept going from one circle to another."

Is one to feel sorry for him, or does he keep himself locked in isolation out of pride? -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 387-388 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/6/10

Collage 189

I was struck by the description of Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskoy who is described like this: "just then Anna Mikhailovna stepped inaudibly into the room, with the business-like, pre-occupied, and at the same time meek Christian look that never left her". Ones of my aunts who died a few years ago had the exact same look. I couldn't have described her better myself! God rest your soul, Aunt Barbara. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 385-386 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/6/10

Collage 188

For awhile I was taken with the possibilities of building with triangles of musical notation. I liked playing with the abstract figure-ness of this way of picture making.

Lynn Waskelis
from page 383-384 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/6/10
from page 303-305 Pevear/Volokhonsky translation

Collage 187

I love everything Indian -- I have been practicing yoga since 1993 and have made several trips to India, the most recent in February 2010. The food, the art, history, culture. On my last trip I visited a museum -- whose name I can't recall and can't seem to find online, either. In any case, at the gift shop I picked up a boxed set of reproductions. Here is Krishna. This has nothing whatsoever to do with War and Peace -- but that's OK with me. More of this imagery to follow! -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 381-382 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/6/10

Collage 186

I will take liberty here and write, even though this is Lynn's collage. She is away this weekend so I will ghost write for her.

Yesterday was the first working day in our new studio space. We are still in the same building in East Boston. We are now on the same floor as Atlantic Works Gallery where we will show this project in December. I was in meditation a few days ago and had the idea of wrapping the gallery in rusty barbed wire and clipping each collage (we should have about 300 finished by then) to the wire. Our friend Beth Jorgansen suggested that we use roses as well to represent the "peace" aspect.

We had two new guest artists yesterday. Lynn has been friends with Beth Jorgansen and Lori Gordon since grade school. Beth went to college with us (Lucy Zahner Montgomery, Lynn Waskelis and Otto Mayr). They each made two collages yesterday. We were joking about how quiet we were while working -- so concentrated in spite of years of catching up to do. So you will be seeing their work and their comments a few months from now. We were roughly at #230 yesterday.

Speaking of guest artists, a friend in New York City, Suzanne Goodhart, wants to make a collage as well. She wants to use fragments of the Berlin Wall. How cool is that? I will also send a few more to Otto Mayr in Berlin who has been a regular contributor.

This week I will be meeting with a woman who is involved with a project called Violence Transformed. Their group is interested in showing this project as well. Their annual show is in May. Here is a brief description of their mission:

Violence Transformed is an annual series of visual and performing arts events that celebrates the power of art, artists and art-making to confront, challenge and mediate violence in contemporary society. Based in the center and surrounding neighborhoods of Greater Boston and drawing upon the creative energies of artists throughout New England, Violence Transformed documents the ways in which our diverse communities harness art’s potential to effect social change and materially transform our environments.

Team Tolstoy is on the move!

-- Lola

Lynn Waskelis
from page 370-380 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 8/6/10

Collage 185

This is the beginning of Volume II. Nicolai Rostov goes home on leave from the military in 1806 and brings his friend Denisov with him. Nicolai is conflicted about his feelings towards his orphaned penniless cousin Sonia who was raised with the Rostovs.

"Rostov was very happy in the love that was shown him, but the first moment of their meeting had been so blissful that his present happiness seemed too little to him, and he kept waiting for more, and more, and more."

This is a mind state so well understood by Buddhists -- how we want what we don't have, don't want what we have, and wish that our experience was different than it is. Nicolai is clinging to a previous experience and is suffering as a result. I really wonder how much Buddhism Tolstoy was exposed to? I see so many threads running throughout this entire book. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 377-378 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/30/10

Collage 184

I thought that it might be fun to respond to just a few words of the text rather than the scene. These words caught my eye: "... when the sleigh was three houses away...". I searched through our endless ephemera supply and found these three images of houses. Each image comes from a book that was previously used in the series. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 375-376 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/30/10

Collage 183

On coming home:

"Which house is it?" asked the driver.

"The one at the end, the big one, don't you see? It's our house," said Rostov, "it's our house!"

Lynn Waskelis
from page 373-374 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/30/10

p. 297 in Pevear/Volokhonsky

Collage 182

This whole chapter was amazing. Volume I, Part Three, Chapter XIX. I follow Lynn here with some intense imagery. At some point I found a book with the catholic mass so used it extensively on this piece. (When did I get so interested in working with the story line??) I thought that Prince Andrei was a goner.

"Though five minutes earlier Prince Andrei had been able to say a few words to the soldiers transporting him, now, with his eyes fixed directly on Napoleon, he was silent... To him at that moment all the interests that occupied Napoleon seemed so insignificant, his hero himself seemed so petty to him, with his petty vanity and joy in victory, compared with that lofty, just and kindly sky, which he had seen and understood, that he was unable to answer him."

a little later, "Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain."

He fingers the icon that his sister had given him before he left for war and wishes that he could see the world as she does, so clearly and simply.

No wonder I was a Russian major in college -- I loved the intensity of all this. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 371-372 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/30/10

Collage 181

Lynn Waskelis
from page 369-370 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/30/10
from page 290-292 of Pevear/Volokhonsky translation:

Where is it, that lofty sky, which I never knew till now and saw today?" was his first thought. "And I never knew this suffering either," he thought. "Yes, I knew nothing, nothing till now. But where am I?"...

...He opened his eyes. Over him again was that same lofty sky with floating clouds rising still higher, through which showed the blue of infinity...

"Voila une belle mort," said Napoleon looking at Bolkonsky...

...He had a burning in his head; he felt that he was losing blood, and he saw above him that distant, lofty and eternal sky. He knew that it was Napoleon- his hero- but at that moment, Napoleon seemed to him such a small, insignificant man compared with what was now happening between his soul and this lofty, infinite sky with clouds racing across it.

This was one of my favorite passages when I read War and Peace a few years ago. Its harsh beauty stood out like the sky it describes. I liked that I "drew" this page by chance and was challenged to make a collage from it.

Collage 180

Lucy Zahner
from page 367-368 of original text
P-V translation, pp. 289-90
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/30/10

"Go onto the ice! Go onto the ice! Go! Turn off! Don't you hear? Go!" cried countless voices after the cannonball hit the general, themselves not knowing what and why they were shouting.
p.290

Collage 179

This collage was started by Lynn and finished by me. Lucy suggested that Lynn and I trade collages when I was feeling stuck and uninspired by one that I had started. This was a fun solution and it gave me a chance to play around with using figures in my collages which I usually shy away from.

Classes have started up for me again and one of the classes that I am most excited for is my collage class. It will be interesting (and a bit scary) to be critiqued and graded on something that I have been doing so naturally with Team Tolstoy for a few months now. I am excited to learn more about the history of collage, find new sources of inspiration, learn some new techniques and discover new materials. We will also be working on a much larger scale in this class, and I am excited to see how that plays out for me.

Happy collaging! --Emma

Lynn Waskelis and Emma Rhodes

from page 365-366 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10

Collage 178

Lucy Zahner
from page 363-364 of original text
P-V translation, pp. 286-87
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10

"But that can't be him, alone in the middle of the empty field," thought Rostov. Just then Alexander turned his head, and Rostov saw the beloved features so vividly imprinted on his memory. The sovereign was pale, his cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken; but there was all the more loveliness and mildness in his features. ~ p. 287

Collage 177

Rostov cannot comprehend that the sovereign has in fact left the battlefield, wounded. It is a reality he refuses to accept. Nothing like a ballroom dance to stave off reality for a bit.

To the devil with these Russians! a German grumbled.

Lynn Waskelis
from page 361-362 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10
pages 284-286 in Pevear/Volokhonsky

Collage 176

This piece was made by Lynn and Emma. One of them started it -- felt stuck or uninspired or some kind of block -- so one of them passed it to the other to finish. I left the studio early that day but was told that they had a good time collaborating on it. We are true collaborators!

When once of us finishes a piece, we hold it up to show everyone. Admittedly we are a supportive, not a critical group. We give a small cheer, a thumbs-up, and continue to enjoy the process and each other immensely.

We will be moving to a new studio space on Friday, in the same building. We will be moving in with Chris Chou, one of our earlier contributors. We all are super charged by her work and are looking forward to seeing how it influences the project. -- Lola

Emma Rhodes and Lynn Waskelis
from page 359-360 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10

Collage 175

All of us who have read the book always comment on the following passage. I'm not sure if the page I used in the original text is the same as this quote, but close enough. At some point I stopped noting in my Pevear/Volokhonkky edition.

"There was nothing over him now except the sky -- the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds slowly creeping across it. 'How quiet, calm, and solemn, not at all like when I was running,' thought Prince Andrei, 'not like when we were running, shouting, and fighting; not at all like when the Frenchman and the artillerist, with angry and frightened faces, were pulling at the swab -- it's quite different the way the clouds creep across this lofty, infinite sky. How is it I haven't seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I've finally come to know it. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquility. And thank God!...'

I am a student of Buddhism and this so beautifully describes some of the deeper teachings. Tolstoy has many death scenes in his other books and they have always made a big impression on me. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 357-358 of original text
collage, acrylic paint, stamp
made 7/23/10

Collage 174

Prince Andrei is gazing at the gray clouds creeping across the lofty, infinite sky and I am longing to escape war and return to some domestic intrigue.

Lynn Waskelis

from page 355-356 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10

pages 279-281 in Pevear and Volohkonsky translation

Collage 173

Emma Rhodes
from page 353-354 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10

Collage 172

I am one big old copy cat. Emma's previous collage used some circle/globe elements that I really liked. She also brought in some yellow ink that I used immediately.

In this scene, you can see that trouble is brewing. The general, Kutuzov, is extremely deferential to the emperor Alexander -- even though he knows that he should speak up.

"However, if you order it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, raising his head an again changing his tone to that of a dull, unthinking, but obedient general.

That's a recipe for disaster, isn't it? -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 351-352 of original text
collage, acrylic paint, ink
made 7/23/10

Collage 171

Sometimes to get started I like to tear my page from the text randomly to see what kind of shape I end up with. This shape, which reminded me of a continent, led me to an old geography textbook we had just acquired, and to the color blue. Collage is very much a problem-solving process. Every collage that we make is a possible solution to the problem we are given. And what's great about these problems is that there are no right or wrong answers.

Emma Rhodes
from page 349-350 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 7/23/10

Collage 170

I have loved Otto's last 3 collages. We are all eager for him to do more -- including Otto! Lulu was saying yesterday that she loves how he works with the story line. He doesn't do literal translation, ie illustration, but rather evokes the feeling of the text. I think we all feel from time to time -- how can I follow that act? I definitely feel that way now, but here goes...

Underneath, I used a page from a thesaurus with the word "war". There were quite a few entries including "declare" an.d "of words" and "correspondent".

On this page of the test, Prince Andrei is anticipating battle. He can hear, through the fog, exchanges of fire between unseen troops. He wonders where the battle will take place and says silently, "it's there that I'll be sent with a brigade or division, and there, with a standard in my hand, I'll go forward and crush everything ahead of me". -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 347-348 of original text
collage, acrylic paint, stencil
made 7/23/10

Collage 169

Our friend Otto writes: The photos that I used in this collage came from newspaper reports on the forest fires that caused so much destruction in Russia and shrouded Moscow in smoke for several weeks this summer. I clipped the photos because the fires in Russia reminded me of the burning of Moscow in 1812 which Tolstoy describes much later in War and Peace. That has nothing to do with the Battle of Austerlitz, which is only just getting started on this page, but I thought the imagery fit anyway and I didn't want to sit on those clippings until sometime in 2012 when we finally get to the Battle of Borodino and the fall of Moscow.

Otto Mayr
from page 345-346 of original text
collage, acrylic paint, burned paper
made 8/21/10
Berlin, Germany