The dragonfly, Somsanith said, is his emblem, the animal he chose as a motif in his art. Among the last practitioners of the royal craft of gold embroidery, Somsanith is, like most Lao, a Theravada Buddhist. His work, the panels he makes and sells at galleries here and in Paris, is intricately patterned with glittering insects. And his beliefs are patterned with the animism that in the lives of most Lao meshes the physical and the spiritual worlds.