Decade: Autoportrait '78 (Star of Hope) is a print from Indiana’s Decade: Autoportraits, Vinalhaven Suite. The print mirrors the format of his Decade: Autoportrait paintings, which the artist created in the 1970s. The paintings are a portrait of his life in the 1960s, and include references to important names, places, and events. The basic format is the same in each: a large circle set in a square canvas, with five points of a star touching the circle’s rim, and within the circle Indiana’s familiar stencil-shaped words and numbers.
The Decade: Autoportraits, Vinalhaven Suite prints, which Indiana created after moving permanently to Vinalhaven, Maine, in 1969, are a record of his life in the 1970s. The artist had been visiting the island yearly since 1969, typically spending several months in the fall working in the Star of Hope Lodge.
He also penned a statement explaining each individual print:
"This year I bade 'adieu' to New York and moved permanently to the Star of Hope on Vinalhaven. The same year I took a trip to South Bend, Indiana to attend another place of my retrospective, which included Texas, Virginia and New York. It was exactly 40 years before in 1938 that a step-grandmother was murdered there, a very decisive event in my early life. And 20 years before I had been employed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine."