Meanderings

A VIEW ON CREATION, PROCESS, SUBJECT AND CONTENT

The Meandering series came into being to provide relief from a series of burdensome but vitally important subjects, that were fraught with anxiety and sadness. My prints and I had entered a world of violence, terror, loneliness, wholesale murder, and injustice. Although there were many aesthetically transcending moments and technical achievements during these periods, the time had come to leave these troubling and historically important series of printings behind: Sociopolitical, Lightness of Being, Solitary Human Forms, and The Armenian Genocide.

 
Where was I to go to offset the inhumanity and suffering depicted in these prints? I was responsible for bringing them to life in my art. The savage content and imagery had become overwhelming, had taken a toll on me, weakening the impetus that was the driving force in bringing the Armenian Genocide into the public arena of art. The answer was closer than I thought when an unusual image-making problem became a solution and an inspirational idea for the Meandering series. 

 
In 2002 after finishing a printing procedure, the residual ink remaining on the plate caught my attention. The faint abstract image known as a "ghost", seemed a worthy background candidate for a final image-overprint. Not having an image in mind, I began to think of possibilities before the ink dried. A nearby rope quickly caught my eye that was used to secure my large rolled up prints for further examination at my studio. An exciting process unfolded—that of painting the rope and placing it carefully on the "ghost" imaged plate in an interesting undulating configuration, and then covering with a sheet of newsprint, I hoping for the best, when it passed through the press.