Celebrating a Year of Creativity and Cultural Enrichment at The Center for Armenian Arts
January 13th marked a historic day for the Center for Armenian Arts as it opened its doors for its very first art exhibition. This vibrant and inspiring space was established with a mission to celebrate and promote Armenian culture and identity. Since that momentous beginning, Center for Armenian Arts has blossomed into a hub of creativity and community. Over the past year, the Center has proudly hosted an impressive 50 events, each one a shining testament to the richness and diversity of Armenian heritage. These gatherings have united people in honoring, exploring, and sharing a unique cultural legacy.
As a dynamic venue, the Center has provided a platform for gifted artists, poets, filmmakers, painters, and other creative talents to showcase their work and engage deeply with appreciative audiences.
Whether you are a creator, performer, or admirer of the arts, the Center for Armenian Arts extends an open invitation to immerse yourself in the beauty, depth, and timeless spirit of Armenian culture. Through its diverse programs and activities, the Center ignites creativity, strengthens community bonds, and ensures that the legacy of Armenian art continues to flourish. By seamlessly bridging tradition and innovation, it aspires to resonate with audiences locally and globally, inspiring a profound appreciation for the enduring richness of Armenian artistic heritage.
Challenging the Norms in Cultural Presentation
This remarkable achievement has been realized in a landscape where many established Armenian cultural organizations typically present only two or three events annually. The Center for Armenian Arts challenges this norm, addressing a critical gap in the community. Too often, there is a tendency to focus solely on celebrating the past or spotlighting artists who have already gained widespread recognition—particularly those validated by acclaimed outside Armenian circles. While honoring heritage and established figures is undoubtedly important, this approach can inadvertently overshadow the fresh, creative voices of emerging Armenian artists within the community.
By prioritizing innovation and providing opportunities for new talents to thrive, the Center seeks to inspire a shift in perspective. It aims to balance respect for tradition with a commitment to cultivating the vibrant future of Armenian art and culture, offering a platform where emerging artists can grow, connect, and contribute to this rich cultural tapestry.
Investing in the Future of Armenian Art
Some may argue that supporting young, emerging artists—who may not yet guarantee a financial return—poses a significant expense. However, the essence of a non-profit organization should be rooted in its mission to utilize donations for meaningful purposes. The true purpose of such institutions is not to accumulate wealth in bank accounts, allowing profits to benefit financial institutions, but to invest in fostering creativity, nurturing talent, and enriching the cultural fabric of the community.
The eight sponsors whose generous financial contributions helped make the Center for Armenian Arts a reality.
While financial prudence is necessary, a non-profit’s success is measured by its impact. Allocating resources to uplift new artists, support innovative projects, and bring fresh voices to the forefront aligns with the core mission of cultural preservation and growth. These investments not only ensure the generosity of donors but also build a legacy that inspires and sustains future generations of creators.
The Center for Armenian Arts exemplifies this vision, proving that meaningful change and remarkable achievements are possible when resources are channeled toward building a community, empowering new talent, and celebrating the enduring spirit of Armenian culture.
The Business of being Armenian
The Center’s annual expenses total approximately $60,000. With 50 events hosted, the average cost per event is $1,200. In its first year, generous sponsors contributed $30,000 in donations, while event-generated income amounted to $15,000. The remaining deficit was personally covered by Stepan Partamian, the visionary behind the concept of this Center. This investment of $60,000 enabled the successful presentation of 50 cultural events to the community in just one year.
Looking ahead to the second year, our ambitious goal is to double our efforts and host 100 events. By expand-
ing our programming, the Center seeks to elevate Armenian identity through dynamic cultural presentations, positioning it as a source of pride and inspiration not only for our youth but also for the broader public around us. This commitment ensures that the ‘business of being Armenian’ becomes a powerful tool in strengthening cultural awareness and connection within and beyond our community.
Join Us in Shaping the Future
In the following pages of this magazine, you will find a detailed showcase of all the incredible events held during our first year at the Center for Armenian Arts. These pages also highlight eight generously sponsored sections, featuring businesses and individuals whose invaluable support made these achievements possible. Their contributions have been instrumental in turning our vision into reality, enabling us to present a rich array of cultural experiences to our community. As we look to the future, we invite you to join this mission by donating or sponsoring. Your support will empower us to expand our efforts and offer daily cultural events, making Armenian art and heritage accessible to the vibrant and diverse Southern California public. Together, we can ensure the continued growth and vitality of this important cultural hub.
The grand opening celebration!
Featuring Rouzanna Berberian’s
This solo show, held at the gallery’s grand opening, showcased Berberian’s exploration of the intricate patterns found in Armenian rugs and their visual relationship to flexible circuit board designs portrayed as geometric abstractions. Drawing inspiration from the way circuit boards store and transmit data, Rouzanna aims to uncover valuable information by examining Armenian rug patterns and symbols. She firmly believes that these meticulously crafted designs carry encoded messages, passed down through generations by Armenian female ancestors. They skillfully blend function and beauty, creating a truly captivating form of artistic expression. “TRACE” invited viewers to embark on a journey
Officials from city of Glendale
that merged traditional craftsmanship with modern technology. Through the fusion of Armenian rug patterns and circuit board designs, Berberian encouraged us to contemplate the interconnectedness of art, culture, and technological advancements.
The exhibition ran from January 13, 2024, to January 28, 2024. The gallery saw a strong turnout from art collectors, critics, art enthusiasts, and the general public. It provided an excellent opportunity for the community to engage with the rich cultural heritage of the Armenian people and explore the fusion of art and technology through contemporary art.
The show concluded with an Artist Talk moderated by Mat Gleason, an internationally recognized art critic and curator of contemporary art. Mat Gleason is also the esteemed founder of the Coagula Art Journal, a publication
Rouzanna Berberian Traces Painting’s Path Forward
January 26, 2024 by Mat Gleason www.coagula.com
Some artists leave without a trace.
Some artists meticulously trace their source material. Some cultures vanish without a trace.
Some people trace their past to preserve it.
Perhaps they trace the path they made last night to find something they lost or maybe they trace their roots or look back for a trace of some lost history or perhaps, bravely seek a trace of a path forward beyond trauma, into a new life.
At Stepan Partamian’s new cultural center ARMENIAN ARTS, the painter Rouzanna Berberian is featured in a fantastic solo show to open the gallery. Entitled TRACE this exhibit is a collection of her recent hard-edge geometric abstract paintings. The work investigates the notion of following a path, be it in the labyrinthine pathways of electronic circuitboards or the generational histories hidden in the plain site of woven patterns in Armenian rugs and tapestries.
The artist composes wild paintings based on her observations of the visual sequences in advanced and primitive technologies. The edges of her painted lines approach the sharpness of Ellsworth Kelly and her color choices make one wonder what would have been if Helen Frankenthaler had possessed the compositional rigor of Frank Stella.
There is a power of laying garish opposites next to each other to produce a potent optic that some artists can imagine, fewer can handle and perhaps only Berberian herself can use as if she is just playing in the studio. Where most artists under the large umbrella term of geometric abstract painting might make stiff presentations of the formal prop-
erties of art for its own sake, Berberian delivers rhythmic configurations, lanky and purposefully lopsided pseudo-figures and pays homage to the coded references with which Armenian women adorned their legendary floorcloths with paintings that appear half hieroglyphic, half Modernist meditation.
Partamian, a controversial figure in the local Armenian community, has opened his cultural space as a place for the members of the Armenian diaspora to embrace what they as a people have done to further humanity. Rather than engage in the trauma grift of the past, Partamian pushes a philosophy of “GenoLIVE” as a strategy to conceptually defeat the very real genocide his race suffered just over a century ago. Artists like Berberian embody the spirit of Partamian’s philosophy that the diaspora is better served looking forward with strength and dignity than bemoaning an unchangeable tragic past.
TRACE highlighted the possibilities of Partamian’s new space, filling each wall with uncompromisingly composed pictures that play with trace elements of high Modernism, the laborious craftsmanship of weaving and the infinite roadmap of information-age circuitry.
The Center For Armenian Arts is located at 250 North Orange Street, Glendale, CA 91203. All photos here courtesy of the gallery and Mr. Partamian.
Timeful: A Seeroon Yeretzian Retrospective.
Pays Tribute to Unique Artist
GLENDALE — Seeroon Yeretzian appeared on the art scene in Los Angeles upon graduating from the prestigious Otis/Parsons Art Institute and School of Design with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1985. Numerous group and solo exhibitions followed and her art was much admired and collected. The recent “timeful: a seeroon yeretzian retrospective,” put together by her son Arno “to celebrate her while she’s still here,” showcases the various styles and phases of the artist’s career, from the earliest to the last few she painted in 2011.
Walking into the elegant Center for Armenian Arts in Glendale on opening night was like walking into a sanctuary of dazzling colors and shapes. Even for one who has been following the artist’s work from the earliest days of her career, seeing it all so lavishly displayed in a single space was an arresting experience. The bright colors of the illustrations, the artist likes to call her “sunshine work,” blended with the darker palette of her “moonshine work,” paintings that give expression to her inner struggles and more socially relevant art. Crucified women and faceless figures trapped in webs and thorns are common themes here the artist has developed over the years.
With the sunnier side of her art, Seeroon pays tribute to her identity as an Armenian. The illustrations in this phase of her creations are inspired by prehistoric Armenian rock carvings, “the oldest art known to my ancestors,” and by the great masters of the Medieval Arme-
by Arpi Sarafian
nian illuminated manuscripts. It was after Toros Roslin, “the greatest of them all,” that Seeroon named the Roslin Art Gallery she established in Glendale in 1995.
Roslin was a “working gallery” where the artist could often be found painting or illustrating Armenian ornate initials. Her iconic “Splendor of Aypupen,” a composition presenting the 36 letters of the Armenian alphabet replicating the Armenian Ornate Initials, has been ever popular since its creation in 1989.
“The Ornate Initials became my incurable addiction, my happiness, my medication and meditation,” writes Seeroon. Also comprising this sunshine phase are the artist’s exquisite designs of colorful peacocks, a bird that carries an important meaning in Armenian culture.
With the darker hues, the artist looks inwards. No matter how painful or humiliating, her inner truth is something Seeroon has never shied away from. The insights into the lives of the homeless and the down-on-their luck, as well as her own experiences of growing up at the Tiro refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon — her parents and grandparents had been displaced from their ancestral lands in the 1915 Armenian Genocide — have much deepened and enriched her art.
When, because of the Civil War in Lebanon, Seeroon immigrated to “this new empire, America the beautiful,” she felt an immediate connection to the homeless and literally went into their midst, donating her time to the City of Los Angeles’s heART Project, a program that helped troubled youth to express themselves in artistic forms.
Over the years, the artist has moved away from the more direct expressions of issues in her earlier work — heads detached from their bodies symbolizing the effects of the Armenian Genocide, for example — to the subtler representations of her concerns in her later work. Even when the distorted figures and the faceless bodies that inhabit this later work are difficult to understand, they provide insight and invite reflection. My deepest regret is not having had
conversations with Seeroon about her more surreal dreamlike sequences.
When in 2012 Seeroon was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a disease that, in her words, left her with a “live head on top of a useless body . . . a chunk of useless garbage,” and could no longer hold a pen or paint, she started writing on the DynaVox EyeMax, “a miracle computer” with a camera that could track the movement of her eyes as she selected letters from the keyboard displayed on the monitor. This resulted in two volumes of poems, the 2012 Word Weaving & Black Chair Confessions and the 2018 Evolution is my Revolution. “It was not my intention to write so that I publish a book. I wrote, simply, because I had no other way of communicating,” she tells the “Dear reader” in Evolution is my Revolution.
The artist may be bound to a wheelchair yet nothing can “touch my spirit,” she asserts. The unrestrained joy in her poems does in fact make all expressions of pity, “meghk e Seerooneh,” irrelevant. Even crucifixion, an obvious symbol of pain and punishment, transmutes into liberation. In
some of her later work the cross and the nails of the crucifix are discarded and with arms wide open the women celebrate their freedom, boldly proclaiming “I exist,” to borrow the title of the artist’s 2010 painting where she places her portrait among the portraits of the great women painters history has chosen to ignore or to marginalize. Seeroon’s “Don’t feel sorry for me” still rings in my ear.
The retrospective brought back into our consciousness the defiant woman whose purpose nothing could diminish. In one her poems, the speaker comes face to face with God and has Him apologize for the suffering He has caused humanity. The artist does in fact plead for a gentler, a “life-loving and peace-loving” God, or perhaps “God(dess),” as a replacement for a “cruel and punishing God.”
Seeroon’s art acquires much relevance in our current apocalyptic context. Hers is certainly not a comfortable view of life, but her art does give life significance amidst the destruction and the brutality we have immersed ourselves in. It reaffirms that the good and the human still exist in mankind. By foregrounding the debased and the vulnerable Seeroon shows that she cares, and caring is what makes us human.
The expressions of appreciation and the memories shared by those present on the “day of celebration” highlighted the woman whose life has been a “timeful,” a word the artist herself has coined, of giving, of sharing, of supporting, a most fitting finale to the retrospective that spotlighted the artist’s creativity and productivity.
The artist’s prolific output, the culmination of decades of tireless work, has been collected in two art albums, the eponymous 2011 “Seeroon Yeretzian” and the best-selling 2014 “Seeroon Darer: Armenian Ornate Initials.” A comprehensive catalogue of her paintings is in progress.
DIANA DAIAN’s
The Picture is worth a thousand Words
From a young age, Diana Daian immersed herself in the world of modeling, becoming the face of leading Armenian fashion and jewelry brands. This early exposure ignited a passion for creative direction and photography, pushing her to move from in front of the camera to orchestrating entire campaigns. Her determination led to the founding of Studio Daian, a hub where she could bring her artistic vision to life.
Transitioning from model to creative director was not without challenges. She worked hard to reshape perceptions, honing skills in photography, art direction, and campaign strategy. Her work for “Harper’s Bazaar” in 2022, where she served as both cover model and creative director, marked a significant milestone, showcasing her ability to merge storytelling with impactful visuals.
Her Armenian-Jewish heritage, rich in resilience and creativity, influences her art deeply, reflected in exhibitions like “The Picture is Worth a Thousand Words”, exploring non-verbal communication. Exhibitions in Yerevan and Los Angeles further expanded her artistic reach, with each city adding unique energy to her work.
Through Studio Daian, she balances multiple roles with precision, supported by a talented team. Whether creating campaigns, curating art, or collaborating with major brands, her focus remains on authenticity and storytelling. Social media, with her 192K Instagram followers, serves as a platform to share her journey and engage with a global audience.
Looking ahead, she plans to enter the film industry, combining her experience in visual storytelling with a passion for acting and producing. As she continues to evolve creatively and professionally, her journey exemplifies the power of vision, adaptability, and relentless pursuit of artistic growth.
Paradise Lost: Anush Babajanyan’s A Troubled Home
by Arpi Sarafian
Even though increasingly doubtful and scared, the internationally acclaimed photojournalist Anush Babajanyan from Yerevan, Armenia, kept returning to that “special place” whenever she could, “partly because Armenians, like me, lived there,” but also because “the story of this place and its people had not been told enough, and I wanted to tell it.”
What started off as a documentation of the natural beauty and the ordinary life of the families living in the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) ended up being a documentation of loss. “Nature in that unknown yet familiar place felt more gorgeous even when we didn’t know we were going to lose it,” says the artist with much emotion. The ninety-nine photographs comprising Babajanyan’s recently published A Troubled Home (EBS, 2022) tell the stories of the families who, following the dissolution of the republic in 2023, were forced out of the land they had called home for millennia to become refugees trying to resettle to a new life.
Babajanyan made her first trip to Artsakh on April 2, 2016. Notwithstanding the ongoing fighting between Artsakh and neighboring Azerbaijan, she kept going back and forth, actively photographing even in regions ceded to Azerbaijan following 2020’s 44-Day War. It was in 2020 that she decided to bring together the work she had done for five years.
The photographs assembled in the elegant volume owe their tremendous appeal to the intimate relationship Babajanyan had with the families. “I had unimpeded access into their homes. I was not an intruder. I am still in touch with them,” she notes candidly. Her pictures are of real people with real names. Only a photographer sharing her subjects’ most familiar space could capture the everyday joys and sorrows the shots convey to the viewer. When asked about the amazing power her work has to touch people, “Once the personal connection is established, photography follows,” she adds.
sakh that Babajanyan wanted to document, as the photo of Liana Babayan happily introducing her newborn son, Movses, the Babayans’ tenth child, to her children at the Stepanakert maternity hospital attests. A mother herself, it was Babajanyan’s genuine concern for the families that won their confidence. There are pictures of children playing joyfully inside their homes, and outside in their backyards while the mother hangs the laundry to dry. Photographs of the entire family seated at the dinner table strewn with numerous dishes abound. Why so many children? How does one feed a family of 12?
Whether it is of the young woman at the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in Shushi lighting 31 candles and putting them together in a tight bunch, one for each year of the age of her friend who was missing in action, of the seven children lined up against the wall of their old apartment waiting for their new home, or of the endless flow of cars during the week-long exodus from Artsakh, the photos reveal the woman who cares deeply for her fellow human beings and for her native land.
“Hadrut is so beautiful,” she says with a sigh. A whole personal philosophy comes to life. Referring to the shot of Harutyun Chobanyan, 13, ”soft and gentle,” hugging his three-month-old brother Levon, she says, “We have to preserve the gentleness boys have that the atmosphere of militarization ruins.”
It was especially the lives of the many large families in Art-
Besides representing the everyday lives, the thousands of photographs Babajanyan took document the consequences of incessant shelling. The breakfast table inside a home in Martuni, hit on the first day of the 44-Day War with
Azerbaijan in 2020, tells the story of destruction with all of its implications of violence, of disruption and of loss. The destruction caused by wars is even more directly evoked by the photograph of lieutenant Vahe Avanesyan, 27, and conscript Harut Gasparyan, 19, waiting and smoking in a trench on the frontline during the shelling of Martakert in the 2016 Four-Day War. There are mages of wounded soldiers, of funerals, and of burning homes. Many owners set their homes on fire before they fled. Babajanyan bemoans the fact that “It is yet another tragedy” that the photographs document. “I never wanted the photos to be a document of what was,” she says, but “we need to talk about it and the photos help.”
“There is so much to learn and to understand,” she adds.
Indeed, a whole history of pain and of displacement comes through in these hauntingly beautiful images. It is perhaps true that “We have art in order not to die of the truth,” to borrow the words of celebrated philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The sense of beauty lost is made palpable in the images of the greens and the yellows in October in Shushi. The oranges of the house burning in the night, on November 14, 2020, make it clear it is all being given away.
The poem by twenty-one-year-old Anna Hakobyan from Hadrut, printed on the first page of the book, sums it all up:
The taste, the smell of my sweet home,
Of my soil that has seen pain, every bit
Of my Artsakh, my world, all of it, I miss.
I miss my soil,
I miss my space,
I miss my place, my home,
My rocky slope, my orchard.
Dear people,
If in this world there is one sweet place,
It springs from my heart. It’s my Artsakh.
Nonetheless, in Babajanyan’s own words, all is “not soaked in tragedy.” The good spirit of refugees trying to do their best to resettle is also evoked.
Babajanyan believed her photos “would make a difference but they didn’t.” “Nothing is happening,” she deplores. At best, it is the ambiguity in the lives of the displaced residents that the photographs capture. There is no theorizing here about grief and the healing process. Just a suffocating feeling of helplessness against the injustice of it all.
Babajanyan’s slide show presentation at the newly inaugurated Center for Armenian Arts in Glendale did much to enhance the book’s appeal to those present. Comments on the beautiful images projected overhead — “Each of my trips to this land has brought me closer to the known,” “I cherish the beautiful, meditative six-hour drive to Artsakh,” “Motherhood has given me access to a deeper level of emotion” — highlighted the emotions depicted in the photos and brought the artist’s work even closer to everyone’s heart. What ultimately emerged was the woman of feeling behind the photographs.
At the end of her presentation, Babajanyan acknowledged the “incredible help” from the designers, the editors, and the printing house in bringing the book together. “The book is for everyone living in Artsakh,” she writes in her Afterword.
To purchase a copy of the book, visit https://anushbabajanyan.org/books/atroubledhome
This article first appeared in Armenian Mirror Spectator Published by permission from the author
DECEMBER 12, 2024
SCREENINGS
November 16, 2024
Homenetmen Los Angeles Cultural Night
AYF Alumni Networking Event
Los Angeles Armenian Folk Instrumental Ensemble
Since its establishment in early 2024, the Los Angeles Armenian Folk Instrumental Ensemble, led by Hovhannes Shahbazyan and musical director Rouben Harutyunyan, has been holding rehearsals every Monday evening at The Center for Armenian Arts. The ensemble presented its debut performances to the community on May 28 at the AGBU Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Performing Arts Center in Pasadena and on December 10 at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, under the title “Legend of the Night: Ruben Matevosyan Concert.”
Stepan Partamian has been actively involved in supporting students’ education in Armenia, particularly in Yerevan. Since 2021, his initiatives have funded over $125,000 in tuition fees for 38 students in Armenia. As of now, 25 of these students have graduated, with 13 still pursuing their studies and 7 expected to graduate soon.
The initiative started by trying to cover the fifth-year tuition for five medical students in Yerevan. These students had their benefits cut by a foundation in Armenia after being promised six years of support in fully tuition payments.
Partamian’s fundraising efforts have received support from various donors. These efforts highlight a community-driven approach to supporting higher education for students in Armenia, ensuring they have the necessary resources to complete their studies.
