The Volga looked like a tiny silver ribbon from the window of the  airplane.
As we approached, the ribbon widened into a  broad, ship bearing waterway, and
we could see smaller tributaries  appearing off the mighty 2,000 mile long
river.   Just south of the region where we were landing, the Volga separates
into a giant alluvial fan  of  800 smaller rivers and streams as it drains into
the Caspian sea.
 Sitting next to me on the airplane was fellow artist Laila Voss, my friend and
coconspirator for ten years. I had brought her art to Volgograd with me
before in 1989, when I had brought the first American art exhibit to the city
since the nineteen thirties.  Laila had wanted to come with me then, but it had
not been possible.  Now we were traveling together.  It was a dream come true.

We arrived in Volgograd on Aug. 12th.  We were met by our hostess, Inna
Neikoupopsknya, whom I had first met during our 1989 visit to Volgograd, and
who had stayed at my home near Cleveland during a sister cities art exchange
program in 1996.   Now she had organized our visit to Volgograd.   As she took
us into the city, we were struck by the differences between America and
Russia we saw no superhighways, malls, or suburbs; instead we saw country
neighborhoods with  gardens and gingerbread trimmed dachas giving way to
massive blocks of look alike  apartment buildings.  Inna lived in one of these,
a building that dated from the Stalin era, that surprised us with the warmth
and spaciousness of its rooms.  A neighbor of hers was  away  and had offered
his home for our visit.  We settled in and relaxed from the long airplane trip
we had just taken.   The next day we met with one of our sponsors, Mr. Kyselov.
the city's Minister of Culture.  For an hour we discussed how we could work
together in the future given the shaky, uncertain  financial situation in
Russia.  He was enthusiastic about finding funding to send Russian artists to
participate in our next project.  Afterwards, we held a press conference that
included a reporter and cameraman from Volgograds TV station. There were
twenty five people there, including journalists, educators, and artists, and
representatives from the Environmental Institute and the Cultural Center. We
spoke about the history of our project and about what we expected to accomplish
in Volgograd. The reporters were especially interested to hear what we as
foreigners had heard about the mother river of Russia.
One of the highlights of the trip came just after this press conference, as I
was reunited with friends I had not seen since I had come nine years ago, as a
representative of the city of Cleveland, Volgograds Sister City in America,
to help celebrate Volgograd five hundredth anniversary.
 We went to the studio of  Gleb Vjatkin, a personal hero of mine, an artist now
in his sixties who painted  during the Communist era, although he was
ostracized by the Artists Union.  For twenty years he painted, creating over a
thousand canvases, in spite of being unable to exhibit his work and sometimes
even having a hard time getting paint.  When I met him in 1989, glasnost and
perestroika had begun to open opportunities for him, and he had just painted
his first mural, at the Music Conservatory of Volgograd.  Now he has painted
murals  and exhibited his art in many parts of the world.
Peter Zeverosfky can tell a similar tale.  He and Gleb gave each other support
during the Communist years, when their cubism was out of official favor. Both
he and Gleb had visited me in  Cleveland, as had our hostess, Inna
Neikoupopsknya, during the Sister Cities project, in 1996.
We were taken to the office of Mr. Yeltin Brula, the Director of Volgograds
Environmental Protection Agency , another major sponsor of our visit.   We
spoke with him for two hours, asking questions and listening  as  he gave us
detailed facts about the Volga region and its environmental problems,  and gave
us some historical perspectives,  which  helped us understand the uniqueness of
the  bio-region.

Later that same day we boarded the Ecological  Institute's forty foot research
vessel for a river journey, hosted by two professors from the Institute. We
sailed upriver, with the city on the left bank and open country on the right,
to  the Volsky dam, notorious for causing environmental disaster by warming the
river just enough so that sturgeon can no longer spawn in it.  Attached to the
dam is a  rusting fish elevator, abandoned because there are so few sturgeon
left in the river.

After returning to the cultural center, where 28 of the river paintings from
the Cuyahoga and the Volta festivals were being exhibited, we held an opening
party, complete with Cossack singers and dancers. About 100 people attended.
Our Music Director, Joseph Rynd, enthralled the Russians with original
compositions on his Ghanaian Balaphone, a xylophone-type instrument.
 The next day we visited Sergei Krylov at his studio.  I had met him on my
first visit, and taken his work to America through our art exchange.  He showed
us his current series, which he called the loneliness of everyday objects
He painted the same still life, a vase of flowers every day, coloring it with
his current feelings and emotions, creating a   subtle, nonverbal diary.
Sergei told us that the city had been famous for its sturgeon for centuries, to
the point that the sturgeon was a common symbol or motif in decorative art in
the region; "Now," he said, working feverishly on a quick sketch, "this should
be the city's official symbol!" He held up  his drawing pad, showing us a skull
and crossbones.  "The pollution has gotten out of hand!  Factories are dumping
waste into the whole length of the river!"
On Monday the art exchange festival began in earnest as we met with the
participating artists, five teenagers and five professional artists. We all
shared what we knew of the Volga River and its environmental issues, and viewed
and discussed the paintings from the other rivers. The artists showed each
other the preliminary drawings and sketches they had made in preparation for
the festival, and laid out supplies so we could paint the next day, when the
festival would be open to the public.
The young women artists involved with the exchange were students at The
Children's Gallery, whose director, Helen Orlova, was also one of the artists
participating in the exchange.  The second day of the festival took place
there, and we all enjoyed its cozy atmosphere.  We presented 35 paintings by
talented Volta (Ghana) artists  to The Children's Gallery.  Although they had
1,600 paintings by children, none were from Africa so Helena was doubly
grateful.
When I had first met Helena in 1989, she was working with fifteen art students
in a crowded basement studio.  Now she and her staff taught three hundred
students not only art but also foreign languages and culture, in a beautiful,
spacious, newly renovated facility.

The staff at the Gallery hung a show of the paintings Laila and I had brought,
and then held an opening party for us. The director of the cultural center, Mr.
Valechin, said in a short speech, „ Standing on the banks of the Volga is like
looking into time itself.  If we spoil the river now, we have ruined it for
generations in the future
Laila and I were invited to show slides of our artwork to about fifty artists
from the Volga region.  Laila's work is highly avant-garde conceptual art, such
as an eight minute film of two people repeatedly throwing themselves against a
wall in downtown Cleveland,  and it stirred up lively discussion among the
Volga artists.  One woman stood up and said, All my life, I've been used to
evaluating art through certain aesthetic principles and Ms. Vossù art breaks
from those and makes me see in a new way.
On the third day, the artists worked intently to complete their paintings so as
to exhibit them with the others for a final opening that evening. By now, word
was out that some exciting art was happening at the Cultural Center and many
people came to check it out. There was dancing, music, speeches and a great
feeling of celebration as the project was successfully completed.   After three
years of planning we finally got to see paintings from the rivers of three
continents hanging side by side, each with the distinctive flavor of its
country of origin, each with its personal message of concern for the rivers.
 

Our remaining time in Volgograd was spent meeting with artists, giving people
tours of the exhibition, discussing future plans for art exchanges, and
learning more about the city's culture and history.
  Inna, our hostess, had lived through the war as a young girl, in a village
only thirty miles from the city center.  She could remember seeing the flashing
lights from the battle,  and still recall the stirring feelings that everyone
had shared during that terrible winter when the Nazi juggernaut ground to a
halt.  She had a friend who went out on desperate, dangerous foraging missions,
gathering grain from bombed out silos in the depths of the Russian winter while
the rest of her family huddled together in a ditch under blankets, without even
a roof over their heads.  All the men were away at war.  Nobody had a home.
 Hitler had crashed through Europe on his unstoppable killing spree when his
troops hit the city, which was then called Stalingrad,  in early winter. The
Germans thought they had  conquered Stalingrad, and put up posters announcing
their rule. The Russians decided to destroy every building in the city, to deny
shelter to the German soldiers. Inna told us in a hushed voice that not a
building or  tree in the entire city was left standing by the time the fighting
was over.
Amazingly, one tree did survive the battle; even more amazing, the tree stood
in the very heart of the battle zone, in a park in downtown Volgograd.  Here,
only two long city blocks from the river's edge, was the pivot point where the
Russians kept the Germans from reaching the river.  Here a grand old poplar
tree (called topal in Russian) stands, surrounded by a small wall, with a
plaque that tells its story.  When we visited it, we noted that the trunk was
strangely swollen, with clusters of burls; Inna told us that this was from all
the bullets that are embedded in the tree, and pointed out that the German side
of the tree was more swollen than the side that had faced the Russian lines,
because the Russians had smaller weapons and less ammunition but more
tenacity, cohesiveness, endurance, and motivation.
..
 These characteristics persist in the people of Volgograd even now, fifty years
later, and although they create some unity, we were amazed at the differences
that we saw between the artists in the project.  Although joined by their love
of the river and the natural world,   some of the artists saw the river as
still pristine and lovely, while others were deeply offended by the prevalence
of sewage and the decimation of the sturgeon population.  This division among
the artists was reflected in the people who came to see the exhibit; our
festival helped spotlight the facts and create dialogue about how to interpret
them.  By using art as an amplifier of people's perceptions and visions, the
paintings injected a more passionate,  inspired,  and mythic level of
discussion than would have been engendered without this visual, visceral
element.
 Since this time, the paintings have been exhibited at many schools and
galleries throughout America.  One curator commented, "These paintings are like
a bomb, a good bomb. One that will help protect not destroy the environment"