Collage 493

This is a really crazy scene. Pierre is in the midst of the battle. He is largely clueless about what is going on, where he is. He witnesses a young officer being killed. "Suddenly something happened; the little officer said 'ah' and, curling up, sat on the ground like a bird shot down in flight." Those are such chilling words. Even so, Pierre has no clue what is happening. It is surreal.

I used some unusual materials here. When I was a young child, my grandparents came to visit us in rural Iowa. My grandmother loved crosswords. I was just learning to write and I would often fill in the blanks, thinking that she wouldn't notice. I kind of like that as a metaphor -- aren't we all just filling in the blanks, trying to make sense of the larger picture? Pierre is doing the same on the battlefield -- trying to make sense, trying to fit in.

Four of us will be traveling to Yasnaya Polyana next week. We finally got our visas yesterday. We will spend 5 days there, giving collaborative collage workshops and preparing for our show there next summer. It is beyond exciting, to anticipate spending time where Tolstoy was born, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He is also buried there. -- Lola

Lola Baltzell
from page 241-242, volume 2 of original text
collage, ink
made 4/29/11
Pevear/Volokhonsky translation page 795-797