Warren High School Community Mapping Project

The Warren High School Art Club and Warren High School R.O.P. Commercial Photography Class, as part of the Museum’s Young Artists Program, were invited to participate in the current exhibit A Sense of Place.

The students were asked to participate by creating a community map that would designate the elements of life in Downey that were important to them; elements that make Downey ‘home’ and give it a sense of place both natural and man-made. Mapping Place is the result of this class term project.

2007

Vasken Brudian

As is with a place, Brudian’s work is intensely layered through the activity of creation and through meaning.  A sense of place in life is created through the energy that emanates authentically from some unknown source. Brudian works to reveal that source to show us the layered context and meaning that is applied to a place. A place created through our perceptions, education, spiritual ideals, and emotional memory. Brudian composes his places like a musician, the rhythm…the paint and form; the lyrics …the ideas. Notations layering rhythm upon rhythm inextricably meshed with ideas and words. The final song is his composition of place.

Brudian draws from his keen interest and profound knowledge of the world’s poets, philosophers and mathematicians for inspiration and story. Deep within his works we sense the complexity of these philosophic and poetic ideals layered together to form an image.

The image, in turn, is the artifact that remains from his explorations and contemplations.  The artifact becomes the new place to explore. A place co-created, artist and viewer, artist and poet. A sense of place that is emotional and imagined, natural and architectural. A place in imagined time.

“Brudian tiptoes along the razor-sharp edge between man and nature, conflict and harmony, instinct and technology.” —Ara Oshagan

Nature the Reverberates in all Men

Acrylic and Ink on Mylar, 32” x 84.5” (81 x 215 cm)

Artist Notes:

In 1630 Count Carlo Borremio III undertook the creation of the splendid island of Isola Bella in honor of his wife Isabella D’Adda. His aim, as he stated was to create nothing short of the most beautiful stretch of land on this earth.

The first part of the title is a phrase from Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s Preliminary Discourse published in 1771. D’Albert derived his concepts of justice, morality and natural law from man’s own human existence; the radical separation of these concepts from metaphysical or theological foundation was not accepted by many of his contemporaries.

Both men, in their own right, were striving for the ideal in human condition.

Jean Le Rond d’Alembert “Preliminary Discourse”, from Denis Diderot, Encyclopèdie ou Dictionnaire Raisonnè des Sciences, des. Arts et des Mëtiers, Paris, 1751; English text from Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedia, edited and translated by Stephen J. Gendzier, Harper & Row (New York), 1967.