The leftovers of communism are everywhere in Moscow, but nowhere more so than in Fallen Monument Park, next to the modern art division of the Tretyakov Gallery.  Statues of now infamous Soviet leaders that used to loom over parks and squares throughout the city were taken down at the collapse of the Soviet Union and discarded in this area next

to the river, only to be turned into a Sculpture Garden later.  It's so interesting to me to see the strong stone-carved faces of leaders that were so greatly feared in the West, now sitting all together in a quiet, insignificant park, with nothing to loom over except for some grass struggling to emerge from the long Russian winter.

On the left: a group of Lenins and Stalins, backed up by some strong Soviet symbolic works.  On the right: Karl Marx.

The Moscow metro was also quite the experience, not only because of its reputation for beautiful stations, but also because of its two suicide bombings earlier that week.  The atmosphere was a bit tense throughout, especially in the station where one of the bombs had killed so many, but the aesthetic of the metro system surely counteracted that sentiment in some way.  Some of the cars even had seats removed so that there could be an "art gallery" on the wall of prints from the city's museums.  Here are some of the stations, one of the bombing sites, and our own artwork inside the train as we made our way home for the last time.

Here are a few more shots from my time in the city--a guy playing some kind of bagpipe instrument on Arbat Street (notice the fur-covered tube attached to the foot-pump!), Red Square at night, enormous empty streets closed off for the midnight Easter Service at Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a cover band we found on our last night (first song was Sex Bomb by Tom Jones!), and a shot of all of us on stage at our show with E. Humperdinck.  My time in Moscow was too short, and I left too soon.  I'm hoping I won't be away long.