A History in Wood

As an art student, I used to walk the old streets of Tomsk – Krasnoarmeyskaya, Gogol, Shishkin, Krylov … Charmed by the beauty of the wooden buildings, I barely noticed the trucks rambling and clanging by, the mud and trash underfoot, the gloomy residents. The disorder and inconvenience could not outshine the fairy-tale, gingerbread carvings on the buildings. I saw the figures of birds and strange animals, secret signs which silently narrated a story of hope and belief through the ages …