The Reconstructed Veteran
In my work’s gym yesterday, after a sweltering 10-mile death march in a 94-degree jungle, I stumbled upon a magazine on the rack next to the elliptical machines. It was an old copy of a Smithsonian. I flipped through it quickly and came to halt on an article about sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd (a Philadelphian!) and the masks that she created for disfigured World War 1 veterans in France following the war. I was fascinated with it and became inspired accordingly. (What a surprise, I know: mangled war veterans plus World War 1 equals Duncan Larkin gold mine.) So I resumed where I left off with the rum and with that meandering movie that flows like the Ganges loaded up with a billion people’s ashes, Ghandi, and decided to try to paint one of her customers wearing his mask: This is it.