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Artist Never Loses Sight of His Roots
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Watchful eye: Kegham Tazian mixes mediums to create this painting focusing
on a guardian of the environment. |
The Observer & Eccentric, Sunday,
October 15, 2000.
By Linda Ann Chomin
Staff Writer
Kegham Tazian rushes into the
Smith Theatre Gallery to install one last art work in his sabbatical exhibit
at Oakland Community College in Farmington Hills.
The assemblage, a statement about the dominance of computers in everyday
life, marks a brief journey away from the paintings and clay sculptures
that frequently focus on the stoic, veiled women of his homeland. A Farmington
Hills artist of Armenian heritage, Tazian has no intention of abandoning
this subject matter.
The 54 mixed-media works and figurative sculptures reflect a deep love
for the villages and countryside of Lebanon where he was born and spent
his childhood before immigrating to the U.S. in 1960. With few exceptions,
Tazian uses the colors of the earth and sky he remembers there.
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Inspiration
"My inspiration is my heritage,” said Tazian,
who’s been a member of the arts faculty at OCC for 34 years. “Although I came
here as a young man, the U.S. is like a studio rather than a source for subject
matter. I’m a firm believer in that our concept for the work never changes but
the way in which we handle it does. I can’t stay with one medium.”
Tazian’s versatility is seen in a number of works where abstraction
and realism exist side-by-side. He’s especially successful in The Window, a
two-dimensional painting in clay that features a woman trapped behind iron bars.
In another work, two women become part of the cave-like surface Tazian
lays on top of a piece of Styrofoam insulation retrieved during renovations
at the college a few years ago.
Works featuring a mother-and-child theme appear among a few totally abstract
works created by layering and spattering paint.
Long and lyrical bronze figures stretch and reach for each other and
the heavens. Tazian consciously avoided the clay sculpture he’s known for in
favor of bronze figures, but one stunning work features two faces emerging from
the tops of towering rock formations that look like ancient buildings.
Computer-aided art
Viewers familiar with Tazian’s works in national
exhibits as well as local venues such as those sponsored by the Livonia Arts
Commission in the fine art gallery at the Civic Center Library won’t be disappointed
in the new computer-aided art. Tazian focuses on the same themes as he did when
he was named the Farmington area Arts Commission’s Artist-in-Residence in 1995
but now incorporates a variety of fresh textures. Using Fractile Painter 5 on
a Macintosh computer, Tazian quickly draws in the subject then adds collage
and paint to create mixed media such as The Prophet, which incorporates some
of his old torn-up prints. Teaching allows Tazian the freedom to experiment
and create all of this art without financial consideration.
“This is another computer-aided art – America is a quilt of what we
are – the rural, the cities,” said Tazian, whose commissions include the city
of Farmington’s 125th anniversary sculpture and work for Forest Lake Country
Club, Bloomfield Hills, Siemens, Troy, and Wayne State University’s Medical
Center. “It’s no different than a canvas. Being in the classroom, you can’t
be oblivious to what’s current but not to lose sight of how to do things in
a traditional way.
“Computers are an additional tool that have allowed me to get a little more
versatile, another way to do things as far as texture. The person behind the
mouse has to know what to do. My respect for painting and drawing hasn’t diminished.
It brings up the question – is it art or isn’t it art? Any new idea is up for
confrontation. Still you have to be an artist to do it. I haven’t abandoned
traditional ways.”
Tazian is still a teacher at heart, lecturing on the basics with one eye to
the future.
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