Artist’s Statement

I am a blender... or, maybe a grinder--processing everything I consume.

Everything goes into this processor--the books I read, the music I listen to, the friends I have, my fears, my politics, my loves... they all go in and I process them--all. And, what comes out of this grinder is not just one thing, but permutations of all I have consumed... and, of course, everything that has consumed me.

The deportation of my Armenian parents from Turkey, the war in Beirut, where I was born, the European counterculture of which I became a part in my teens, life in Los Angeles, where I have lived for the past 30 years, my bladder cancer at 38 and the more than a dozen surgeries that followed... all of these, and so much more, have taken and given space in my processor--this grinder--sometimes dulling the blades, only to sharpen them again and again.

The only way I have kept my sanity is by keeping this machine working.

A constantly pulsing and growing array of cultures coexist inside me and are in constant search of dialogue, intercourse, and expression through my art, which over the past 25 years, has become more and more abstract.

So, I continually try to create my own reality. And reality, according to Aragon, is that which has no contradictions, entailing no conscious thought, and no conscious thought means no doubts, which means you're in a reality that is fascinating. You are creating without any boundaries or laws.