The Pest

“The Pest” in this case the common housefly – creates a long completely- connected flight path across every page of the book. My book allows the reader to turn 281 pages with a fly’s flight path through hell. This is a slow meditation on what humans are capable of doing to others. The seed for my book began with my grandmother’s story she left Russia before the Holocaust which would later claim her older sister Tammy and her five children. Then when I was seventeen I traveled with the organization “March of the Living” to witness the concentration camps in Poland. I spent over five years working at Blackburn’s Printmaking workshop to make “The Pest”. My thoughts present while cutting out linoleum and matching lines that get printed backwards. The slow for my project was tantamount for seeking an answer for questions I may never understand. Ellie Wiesel said “never forget”. However, there is amnesia that creeps into our society. Wars with no end, children separated from their parents at U.S. boarders, isolationist and closed door policies, a repetition and a reminder of the not so distant, past. The other instead of the us, where to begin? On a flight path that circles back to each one of us.