Article: Free Times, November 22-28, 2006

ART 

By Mary Benz Gilkerson 

NOVEMBER 22-28, 2006

A Feast for the Senses

A review of Vista Lights, an annual gallery crawl held Nov. 16in the Vista. 

A variety of different venues some galleries and some retail spaces that incorporate exhibition space showcased work by many local artists in the annual fall open house for the Vista last Thursday night. 

The Vista Arts and Antiques District has been shifting and changing lately. For almost 20 years, it has been the hub of the Columbia arts scene. That hasn't changed dramatically yet, but signs are there that change is on the way. 

Those shifts were evident in this year's Vista Lights event. Some galleries have closed or moved. Cameo Gallery, a longtime Vista resident, has moved across the Congaree River to West Columbia. Gallery Two is a thing of the past. On the other hand, if Art Gallery has opened just down from the former Cameo spot on Lincoln Street.

 

With the rapid development of the area between Lincoln and Huger streets, empty spaces for temporary exhibits and installations of the kind that have been a part of Vista events for years have dried up. 

With the Vista (and Columbia) booming with corresponding increases in the cost of space, watch for the natural development of satellite arts areas: Rosewood (SoRo), Meeting Street in West Columbia, Five Points and Devine Street. After fits and starts over the last couple of years, Columbia may end up with a multi-layered arts scene yet. 

The exhibits that stood out Thursday night were at three Vista mainstays I. Pinckney Simons, City Art and Vista Studios, New Crop, New Art at Gallery 80808/Vista Studios is a survey of work by the resident artists Ethel Brody, Pat Callahan, Stephen Chesley, Jeff Donovan, Heidi Darr-Hope, Pat Gilmartin, Robert Kennedy, Susan Lenz, Sharon Licata, Laura Spong, David Yaghjian and Don Zurlo. The show is strong, even if a bit crowded. 

Chesley and Donovan are newcomers to the studios but are hardly new to Columbia. Moving into a new space seems to have energized both artists. Chesley's new paintings are dark and spare, more immediate in the paint application. The color depth and the viscosity of the paint pull the viewer into his evocative landscapes. 

It's impossible to tell which is impacting which in the interplay between Donovan's paintings and clay pieces. They seem to be feeding each other in equal measure. The absurdity of the human condition plays out with a measured dose of irony and humor. 

Humor is also a major component of Yaghjian's recent work. In these acrylics on paper, he presents the viewer with a series of autobiographical musings on midlife that feature his own figure as the main subject. Some are farcical, but a number of them have a tension that comes from dark comedy. In "Old White Rapper" the figure of the man dissolves into the background, ghost-like against the darkness. 

Zurlo's work has not been seen in Columbia as much as it should. His paintings are completely non-objective, with an approach to color that creates compositions that are either at a full blast of intensity or so subtle that they are tonalist. 

The open house and gallery walk may have been Thursday night, but the art in most spaces will still be on view for the next couple of weeks. 

Let us know what you think: Email editor@free-times.com. 

Article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 1997

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Article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 25, 1997

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Article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 18, 1997

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Article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 28, 1988

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Article: Asheville Citizen-Times, September 1980

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Article: Asheville Citizen-Times, January 13, 1985

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Article: Atlanta Business Chronicle, August 15, 1988

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Article: Carolina Arts, November 2005

November Issue 2005

Vista Studios in Columbia, SC, Offers Group Exhibition for 2005 Vista Lights

Vista Studios opens Expressions at its Gallery 80808 on Nov. 17, 2005, as part of 2005 Vista Lights. The artists of Vista Studios also open their studios for this evening of extended hours by galleries in Columbia, SC's, Congaree Vista. The exhibit continues through Nov. 28, 2005.

Expressions - a rather self-indulgent theme for artists? Perhaps, but one that sparked amusingly literal to provocative spiritual interpretations. The artists represented are Carol Barks, Pat Callahan, Pat Gilmartin, Heidi Darr Hope, Robert Kennedy, Susan Lenz, Sharon Collings Licata, Laura Spong, David Yaghjian, and Ron Zurlo.

Susan Lenz turns to the written word in her amusingly obsessive collage series, No! no! A Thousand Times No! and the variation If I've Told You Once, I've Told You a Thousand Times. Lenz's investigations with words continue in book art to include It's a Classic, My Mother's Jewels, and in collaboration with poet Melissa Bush, Becoming an Artist. Pat Callahan explores the spoken word and the depth of communication in the mixed media communication: communion.

The expressive reality of time-worn faces is the subject of Pat Gilmartin's new sculpture series Life Lines. Gilmartin celebrates the creased and lined faces of elderly, faces etched with the experience of life and a welcome departure from the smooth, taut "beauty" of youth. Gilmartin also presents the new series of wall sculptures Fig Leaves.

Heidi Darr Hope, once again a Vista Studios artist, presents the provocative mixed-media works Forgiveness, All as One, Mother of All, and Holy Ones. Each vibrant composition stands as spiritual conversation.

Two artists speak to a sense of place in their entries. Laura Spong captures the cool and calm of the mountains in summer that belies the season's extremes in Mountain Melody, a non-objective oil painting. In his paintings, the newest Vista Studios artist Don Zurlo evokes experiences of place and time: a deep forest that defies the heat of summer in Landscape with Green over Blue; the day, hot and tired, easing into summer night in Red Moon; a softly-colored space that gives perspective on the passing of life and love in 12 Layers of Melancholy.

Stepping into a dreamed state of being, Sharon Collings Licata manifests a "rock solid peace" in alabaster with Rock Dove. And she gives shape to the "twists and turns of an expressive night" in Desert Night. The abstract sculpture is carved in black chlorite. Ethel Brody explores the flipside of dreams in the acrylic abstract painting Nasa Nightmare.

Carol Barks works in cooperation with the nature and formation of the stones she sculpts. Thus she shaped the creature-like Pisciform I of orange alabaster and Pisciform II of yellow calcite. Barks discovered the granite for her sculpture Second Time 'Round in the alley beside the studios. The stone was once part of a Civil War statue long stored in the bowels of the 808 Lady Street building. The statue of an officer was unfortunately reduced by sledge hammer to rubble, but is now recycled and reinvented for Expressions.

David Yaghjian treats the viewer to new scenes from the life of his rumpled old man in the oil paintings Mowing, Leaf Blower, and Man and Grill. Yaghjian sees the character as self-referential, but also as an every man or anyone's great uncle, or "that guy in line at the bank."

Gallery 80808 and Vista Studios are located at 808 Lady Street. Visitors are advised to avoid the Lady Street construction chaos by entering the studios from its side door on the walkway that begins on Gervais Street and runs beside the M. Craig and Co. showroom and the Rhino Room.

For more info check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call 803/252-6134 or at (www.gallery80808vistastudios.com).

Article: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 1, 1988

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Article: The State, September 2000

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Article: Citizen Times, January 21, 2001

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Article: Columbia City Paper, April 25, 2007

April 25 12:24 PM

Edmund and David Yaghjian’s Joint Exhibition at if ART Gallery

Published in Arts 

By Judit Trunkos

International Fine Art Services is currently presenting its first show at the if ART gallery, located at 1223 Lincoln St.

Edmund Yaghjian, a native of Armenia and long-time Columbia resident, moved to South Carolina from New York to become the first Chairman of the Art Department at USC. While teaching art he continued to work on his cityscapes as well as on his architectural pieces. if ART Gallery will present his earlier New York-era scenes alongside his later cityscapes. Edmund Yaghjian’s works can also be viewed at the State Museum, where there are currently over 100 paintings and sketches presented at his solo show titled A Retrospective, until September 16, 2007.

His son, David Yaghjian, is also fascinated by architecture and became known as an urban artist, painting buildings and highways. As David explained “[painting] buildings and highways was not only a break from painting people, but it was also convenient since buildings do not move.” 

Yet a drastic subject matter change occurred almost accidentally for the younger Yanghjian when he did a painting for a fund raising exhibition which featured a middle-aged man with a big belly standing around in his underwear. Yanghjian enjoyed his new creature so much that he started painting more and more of him, leaving behind the architectural and city life subjects. The comic, yet sad figure is presented in different environments—at his house, with his dog, at a circus—in surprisingly unusual positions.

But who is this character that seems to capture Yaghjian’s imagination? Is this a self-portrait or self-examination, perhaps an existential series of works? According to David, his paintings don’t always carry a deep philosophic message. The middle-aged figure is a mixture of people who appeared in Yaghjian’s life; perhaps his neighbor, his great uncle and a little bit himself.

 

The 20 monotypes shown at if ART Gallery, present a good variety of the younger Yaghjian’s new works and will run through May 12. David Yaghjian’s works can also be viewed at a group show titled Studio Visits, at the Greenville County Museum of Art until June 3.

Article: Columbia Star, January 21, 2005

Five Points sets stage for artists
David Yaghjian submits paintings for Paint Five Points
By Rachel Haynie

Artist David Yaghjian reveled in the rationale behind the current Paint Five Points project. “I grew up cutting through here on the way to school every day,” said the native Columbian whose artist parents reared him in the University neighborhood. “I have a history with these buildings and an affinity for them.”

When Yaghjian and his wife Ellen, a fountain sculptor, moved back to Columbia from Atlanta, “I took up painting buildings around here that I particularly liked when I was growing up. I have tried to get away from painting buildings,” said Yaghjian, “but I keep coming back to them.”

In search of new perspectives and light, Yaghjian and fellow artist Stephen Chesley wandered around Five Points, looking for subjects of interest. “We hung out for a while on the roof at Village Idiot. We found some good subjects from up there,” he said.

Yaghjian has submitted several paintings to the first round of art to be put on view soon in a Five Points shop or business. Part of the proceeds from the sale of the art will stimulate a second phase that will bring more artists and art onto the scene. The goal is to capture Five Points’ village essence while affording shoppers and art patrons opportunities to see artists at work.

Article: Free Times, February 4, 2004

Art
Organic Connections:  A review of Winter Exhibition: Chesley, Williams, Wimberly, Yaghjian, on display at Gallery 80808 through Feb. 5.
By Mary Bentz Gilkerson

Place, space and time. A whole multitude of things communicate a deep sense of place. An image can evoke a range of sensory responses from the odor of a murky pond on a hot summer day to the feel of the sun on bare skin on suddenly hot fall afternoons. 

Visiting the annual winter exhibition of work by Stephen Chesley, Mike Williams, Ed Wimberly and David Yaghjian is as evocative of place as sitting on the porch in a rocking chair with a glass of tea. All four artists are keen observers of the world around them, adept at standing apart a bit, absorbing it and returning it in visual form. 

This is the third year for the group's show at Gallery 80808 in the Vista Studios. The first group show, during the December 2001 holiday season, included Chesley, Williams and Wimberly. The second show in January 2003 brought Yaghjian into the group. According to Williams, the members of the group have coalesced on the basis of professional and personal affinity for each other. 

Williams highlights one of the most interesting aspects of the exhibit the group factor. In what ways are artists influenced by working with other artists? What ties a group of artists together besides friendship? How does that friendship spill over onto the canvas? 

All too often, group exhibits are put together by curators albeit sympathetic curators who are looking for connections, sometimes to the point of creating or manufacturing them. In this case, those connections have had the chance to grow in an organic way and have an impact on the development of each member of the group. 

All four artists are colorists, using pigment to translate the ephemeral effects of light falling across surfaces. Williams shows some of his best work yet in several smaller pieces that use multiple layers of transparent paint to convey the depth of water under reflecting and refracting light. In Lake at Night, a small square piece whose size belies its impact, he creates a moody waterscape over which light and color move in a flickering dance across the canvas. 

Yaghjian also follows the movement of light across the landscape, but in his case it falls predominantly on the urban buildings that describe the life a city. The color in his paintings comes both from the angle of the light, particular to the time of year and weather, and from the interplay of that light with the local color of the flat architectural planes. In Two Notch/Gervais, he lights up the typical Southern urban scene with the warm light of a fall afternoon. The banality of the subject matter disappears in the flood of light and color. 

Stephen Chesley is particularly known for his solitary landscape paintings. Here, he takes his fascination with the drama of light into printmaking with a series of small intaglio prints. Hurricane, Tidal Surge plots the ongoing conflict between the forces of nature, earth and wind with the solitary tree caught between. In Tree, Slight Hill the drama is more subtle. The quiet isolation of the lone dark tree against the bleached sky is contemplative rather than dramatic.

 

Wimberly shows both his familiar work, which uses everyday objects in unfamiliar situations like an overstuffed armchair bursting into flower in Budding Out as well as several pieces that move in a new direction. Abelard and Heloise is an open-ended painting that contrasts a solidly defined female figure with a male figure that dissolves into multiple outlines of a moving form. 

Light, surface and color are important to all four artists, but each artist invites the viewer to confront a kind of existentialist dilemma different from the traditional modernist man versus urban life. It's the new/old dilemma of the relationship of nature and humanity. 

Article: The State, September 3, 2000

Published Sunday, September 3, 2000, in The State.

Season takes off with a flurry of shows

By JEFFREY DAY
Staff Writer

It's hard to compete with 18th-century French paintings at the Columbia Museum of Art. And it's hard to compete with an Andrew Wyeth painting just purchased by the Greenville County Museum of Art for $1.5 million.

But there are other things going on, in this case a whole bunch of small art shows cropping up around the region.


Inaugural show at McMaster. The newest gallery in town opens Monday with an exhibit of ceramics.

The gallery in the McMaster Building, which houses the USC art department, has a large ceramics show as its inaugural exhibit.

Among the 14 artists in the exhibit are Ralph Paquin, Douglas Gray, Cynthia Howes and Mike Vatalero, coming from all over the state. This show aims to take in just about everything in clay, from tiny teapots to big sculptures.

The gallery is on the ground floor toward the back of the building at Senate and Pickens streets. Call (803) 777-7480.

Other exhibits coming up at there are a painting and drawing exhibit by Bruno Civitico of Charleston and a sculpture show by Norwood Viviano, who taught at USC last year.


City scenes from native son. David Yaghjian, who recently moved back to Columbia where he grew up, has a new exhibit of new paintings, most based on the architecture of the region including quite a few familiar scenes from around Columbia.

The show is at the Morris Gallery, 2515 Devine St., through Oct. 7. Call (803) 254-1640.


Digital imaginings. Roy Drasites and Gunars Strazdins, both longtime professors at USC, have a joint show, "Graphic Photographic," at Presbyterian College in Clinton. The exhibit is on display Thursday through Oct. 1, and the two artists will give a talk Sept. 13 at 4 p.m. Call (800) 476-7272.


Flowers at Hampton III. Tom Flowers, who was a longtime professor at Furman and a major force in the state's emerging contemporary art scene, has an exhibit at Hampton III Gallery in Greenville through September. Call (864)268- 2771.


Patterns from the land. Dee Hansen is showing her landscapes and patterned paintings at the Fine Arts Center in Camden. The 40 works in the show cover a 30-year period for the Columbia artist.

The show opens Thursday and is on display through Sept. 29. The center is at 810 Lyttleton St. in Camden. Call (803) 425-7676.


Charleston show. Several graduates of the College of Charleston are back for a show.

John Sarra, Jason Rucker and Joseph Burwell were standouts a few years back while working toward their undergraduate degrees at the school.

Since then all have gone on for advanced degrees: Sarra from Washington University in St. Louis, where he's teaching; Rucker got his master of fine arts from Yale University and is living in Philadelphia; and Burwell has settled in New York after finishing his graduate degree at Tulane University.

The three artists take very different approaches.

Burwell creates installations starting from one object and working out from there. Rucker's paintings are usually dark and expressionistic. Sarra paints very finely tuned, detailed still lifes and landscapes.

The show is up through September. The gallery is in the Simons Center at 54 St. Philip St. Call (843) 953-5680.


New paintings by Jackson. Bill Jackson of Aiken has a solo show at the CityArt Gallery opening Friday and running through Oct. 14.

His newest works are an outgrowth of some recent eye problems, dealing in a non-obvious way with it.

The show is on display through September. The gallery is at 1224 Lincoln St. Call (803) 252-3613.


Blackwell back at Benedict. "The Art of Tarleton Blackwell: Small Scale Works" at Benedict College features some familiar themes by the Manning artist. Blackwell is well known for his series of works based on the ordinary farm hog. He has had solo shows in museums, including the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte.

The gallery is in the Ponder Fine Arts Center at Benedict, 1600 Harden Street. Call (803) 758-4460.


Philip Mullen in Sumter. Philip Mullen, recently retired after about 30 years teaching painting at the USC, has a solo show at USC-Sumter. The exhibit is drawn from the collection of his daughters.

It opens Tuesday and runs through Oct. 26. An opening reception will be held at 6 p.m. Friday in the gallery and Mullen will give a talk. The show is in Anderson Library, USC-Sumter, 200 Miller Road. Call (803) 938-3727.

Rutenberg recognition. Brian Rutenberg, originally from Myrtle Beach and living in New York for about a decade, recently had a show in Dublin. It was connected to work he started in Ireland in 1997 while on a Fulbright Fellowship there. He also has a mid-career retrospective coming up in Ohio that had prominent mention in the recent Art in America.

A bit closer to home he's in a group show at the Hidell Brooks Gallery in Charlottes, along with Leslie Lerner and Todd Murphy. The show opens Friday and continues through Oct. 21. Call (704) 334-7302.

Opening night is also gallery crawl night in Charlotte, a good chance -- if you haven't had enough by that point -- to see even more shows.

Article: The State, February 19, 2004

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Article: Free Times, January 2004

arts beat
Group Exhibit Highlights Local Talent

By Rachel Haynie

Four of the area’s strongest visual artists have grouped their work for the second time in an exhibit on display at Vista Studios (Gallery 80808) through Feb. 5. In what is becoming a much-anticipated annual winter exhibit, David Yaghjian, Stephen Chesley, Mike Williams and Ed Wimberly are presenting 50 works that are mostly new. Most of the pieces are on canvas, but there are also works on paper, as well as some metal sculptures by Williams.

Yaghjian paints Columbia scenes as urban reality, a direction he has been pursuing since returning to his hometown a few years ago after years spent painting and exhibiting in Atlanta. Instead of representing only the capital city’s more glamorous architecture, he captures stark corners and deep shadows from North Main to Senate Street and Millwood Avenue, then ventures into residential areas such as Glenwood Avenue in search of familiar structures to render disquietly.

A few of Yaghjian’s works on display depart from the Columbia theme, instead revealing influence from his recent arts residency on Pritchard Island. Williams also had a residency on the barrier island a summer earlier and, like Yaghjian, has since incorporated elements of Palmettos into his works. Williams also abstracts myrtles, marshy backswashes and islets, always returning to his signature fish motifs.

Such native coastal imagery also dominates Chesley’s works. He captures the sea islands’ mystique in large-scale paintings of elongated horizons at dawn and dusk; the scenes appear to have been viewed from across marshes. The titles of a number of his lush pieces include the word “slight,” implying that he caught the light or mood in plein air, just at its transition. In addition to 18 lush landscapes for which Chesley has become known, this exhibition also includes an homage to the French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin, who died one hundred years ago.

Wimberly, a St. Matthews artist whose reputation centers largely on his unique portraiture, returns for this show to his other well-known style, often described as Southern gothic surrealism. In two of his larger works, he has floated parts of a wooden artist’s mannequin, using the segmented pieces as one central visual element.

This exhibition represents an independent venture by Columbia artists to take their work to patrons and prospective patrons. During the first few minutes of the opening reception, several well-known local collectors were perusing the gallery, noticeably pleased by what they were seeing. Both quality and value were mentioned; one collector said if the same pieces were offered in the Charleston market, the works could command considerably higher prices.

This show represents an opportunity for Columbians to view artistic talent that might someday become part of contemporary art history, in the way that a group show featuring works by Charles Sheeler, Edward Hopper, Rene Magritte, George Iness and David Smith might have been an artistic benchmark in a previous century.

This exhibit is on display through Feb. 5. The artists will be in the gallery on Feb. 1 from 3-6 pm.  Appointments can also be arranged by calling 252-6134.

Article: Free Times, May 2, 2007

Issue #20.18 :: 05/02/2007 - 05/08/2007 

The Shifting Feel of Artista Vista

A review of Artista Vista

BY MARY BENTZ GILKERSON

This year’s Artista Vista was vastly different from the earliest versions back before the Vista went up-market. Back in those days, space was a lot cheaper and there were artists’ studios in the area other than those at 808 Lady St. Carol Saunders was the only commercial gallery. Most of the exhibits were in temporary spaces, and most of the artists exhibiting were young, many still students. 

Clark Ellefson of Lewis & Clark is the creative force behind the development of the art scene in the Vista. In the early years, he found spaces for the temporary exhibits and installations, as well as hosting exhibits in his own gallery space at the corner of Lincoln and Lady. Always interesting and frequently innovative, those exhibits ended this year when Ellefson lost the corner space to rising rents. He still has his large workshop in the middle of the block, but the display and gallery space are gone. 

These days Artista Vista is a mature gallery walk, with commercial galleries being the predominant venues. The only nontraditional or nonprofit space left is Vista Studios/Gallery 80808.

The show by the resident artists at Vista Studios is one of the strongest — it includes works by Ethel Brody, Pat Callahan, Stephen Chesley, Jeff Donovan, Heidi Darr-Hope, Pat Gilmartin, Robert Kennedy, Susan Lenz, Sharon Licata, Laura Spong, David Yaghjian and Don Zurlo. 

Zurlo’s Blooming Bush explores subtleties of color within its thick medium-encrusted surface. The delicacy of the thin layers of color is not apparent until you get very close to the painting. Laura Spong weaves a calligraphic line through her equally nonobjective paintings that gives them a baroque complexity.

3D work is more plentiful than ever before. Pat Callahan’s assemblages make allusions to time, space and memory — with a bow to the master of the boxed assemblage, Joseph Cornell.

Jeff Donovan’s clay sculptures, such as Sentinel, have developed a rich weathered and brushed surface that melds together the painterly with the sculptural.

Pat Gilmartin’s The Crow haunted Her Dreams is completely devoid of texture or color. She juxtaposes the solid black form of the crow with the equally solid and simplified female head. The smooth arc of the crow’s body leads straight into the turned head of the woman.

Besides the 80808 show, both Yaghjian and Chesley have exhibits in the galleries that handle their work. Yaghjian has a new series of monotypes at if ART Gallery. The prints continue the midlife musings that have become some of his best work. In Between Two Chairs, the artist’s figure appears suspended, precariously and impossibly balanced atop two chairs. It’s not a matter of “if” he’s going to fall, but “when.”

The gallery is also showing works on paper by Yaghjian’s father, Edmund. In pieces like Crossing at Sparta, NY and Wheat Street 1950s he captures the particularities of place in animated lines.

Chesley’s solo show at Carol Saunders focuses on his landscapes, especially those with a certain kind of diffused light. Field, Trees, Sky, (Pines) is loosely painted, focusing on the intersection of the tree line and a glowing sky. The more gestural strokes in the sky are a counterpoint to the horizontal calm on the field below.

In School’s Out IV, City Art again features recent graduates from area art programs. The focus is on 2D work, particularly figurative painting. Max Miller’s handling of paint and subject is very sophisticated, far beyond the undergraduate level. From Lee Swallie’s huge portraits on paper to Stephanie Mustric’s darkly funny, almost film-noir paintings of women in power, this is a solid show.

Regional and local artists’ work can be seen at The Gallery at DuPRE, The Gallery at Nonnah’s and at I. Pickney Simons Gallery, which is presenting a themed show, Southern Landscapes, by gallery artists.

Three spaces on the edges of the Vista also merit a visit. Three in Search of a Studio at McCrory Galleri includes the work of painters Napoleon Jones-Henderson and John Wright, and sculptor Leon Woods. One Eared Cow Glass’s is filled with art glass from the hands of artists Tommy Lockart and Mark Woodham. And the Edmund Yaghjian retrospective continues at the S.C. State Museum.

Article: Greenville Online, April 11, 2004

Artist shares a 'sense of wonder at the ordinary'

Posted Sunday, April 11, 2004 - 1:57 am

By Ann Hicks

ARTS WRITER

ahicks@greenvillenews.com

As he reflects on his first solo exhibit at Hampton III Gallery, painter David Yaghjian says, "Mostly what I paint is what's around me."

To be more precise, the 24-piece show — all acrylic with the exception of one watercolor — is the Columbia-based painter's view of everyday landscapes, seen through urban eyes.

As Yaghjian sweeps his color-laden brush with angular motions and intersecting lines, the viewer is taken on a ride through cityscapes and along superhighways, to public buildings and private dwellings, and is asked to linger at a taxi stand and sit in a little neighborhood diner.

The trip is at once starkly familiar and strangely enigmatic.

"I swing back and forth," Yaghjian says.

"What you see (in the pictures) is my multiple personalities. Over the years, I have tried not to paint. I have tried to have an honest profession like carpentry or picture framing, but each time I went away from painting I found my life intolerable."

Yaghjian's inner portraits seem to agree with the French painter Paul Cezanne's observation that "the painter must enclose himself within his work."

As Yaghjian describes it, "I am an ordinary person and what I paint are ordinary things and when I paint them they give me a feeling of calmness."

Yaghjian studied in 1967 at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts, both in New York City. Later, in 1970, he earned his undergraduate degree in art from Amherst College.

"What I found important to me about painting is the act of painting," he says, "what it gives to me and what I hope I embed in the work and pass on to those who look at it and those who come to own it."

And, he adds, he hopes to share "that same sense of wonder at the ordinary world."

Article: Henderson Times-News, June 3, 1981

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Article: Carolina Arts, September 2000

September Issue 2000

Works by David Yaghjian on Exhibit at the Morris Gallery in Columbia, SC

The Morris Gallery in Columbia, SC, announces an exhibition of paintings by Columbia artist David Yaghjian. The exhibit of recent works will be on view from Sept. 7 through Oct. 7.

Yaghjian's work is driven by his passion for architectural vistas and the local inhabitants. This collection of over twenty-five paintings document the fragility and grandure of the architecture and landscapes throughout our region.

Yaghjian studied in 1967 at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts, both in New York City. He graduated with a BA from Amherst College in 1970 and proceeded to be involved in group and one-man shows in the ensuing years. He has two murals to his credit in Atlanta, GA, and has won several art awards over the years.

Yaghjian's most recent shows included two group shows at the Right Brain Art Gallery in Atlanta, GA: John Borden Evans, David Yaghjian in 2000 and Observations in 1999. This is the artist's third solo exhibition at the Morris Gallery.

For further information check our SC Commercial Gallery listings or call 803/254-1640 or FAX 803/254-2257.

Article: The State, January 25, 2003

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