Evelina Galli - Armenian Reporter

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At National Veterans Creative Arts Festival Karnig Thomasian wins first prize by Lola Koundakjian Air Force veteran Karnig Thomasian, of New Jersey, won first prize in this year’s National Veterans Creative Arts Festival. Thomasian had also won second prize (in the monochromatic category) at the same festival in 2007. There are 130 categories offered in the competition. Thomasian and his spouse, Diana, were in California October 20–27 to attend the event and accept the prize. “Every VA hospital, in each of the states, holds a competition,” Karnig Thomasian said. “The winner then gets to go to the national competition, all expenses paid.” This year’s event was held in Riverside, California, hosted by the VA Loma Linda Healthcare System. In his autobiography, Then There Were Six: The True Story of the 1944 Rangoon Disaster (reviewed by William A. Rooney for the Armenian Reporter – February 2005), Thomasian wrote about his experiences training to be a gunner and flying around the world in B-29s. At the time, the B-29 was the largest and most complicated aircraft ever built – the Enola Gray, which dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a B-29. Thomasian quit high school to volunteer for the Air Force during World War II. He trained as a riveter, then a special B-29 gunner. After numerous training stops and forming a team, Thomasian served in Asia, where he survived the Rangoon disaster and was captured by the Japanese when he was 21 years old. Upon his return to New York City as a former POW, he continued his studies under the G.I. Bill. Having been brought up by a pianist mother and in a household full of visiting artists, Thomasian attended the Arts Students League (ASL) for four years. Those were the golden years of the institution, where the ghost of Arshile Gorky held court – the artist used to visit Stuart Davis there prior to the war. Another war veteran studying at ASL was Manuel Tolegian, who became a close friend of Jackson Pollock’s. After graduating from ASL, Thomasian married and continued his studies in layout and typography, which gave him opportunities to work in agencies all over New York City. A successful career ensued. He retired in 1996. All was not easy for Thomasian who grew up in a loving three-generation household in Kew Gardens, N.Y. The family moved to Washington Heights, an Armenian enclave in northern Manhattan, after his father lost his business during the Crash of 1929. Both of Thomasian’s parents hailed from Istanbul. His mother moved to Venice and then Paris, where she graduated from the Conservatoire de Paris. When Thomasian was growing up, his parents held musical soirées on a regular basis. They would invite musicians Above: Karnig Thomasian during an exhibit of his work. Photo: Diana Thomasian.Left: Karnig Thomasian during the Reporter interview, October 2008. Photo: Lola Koundakjian. Below: Portrait of Alfred Goldstein – charcoal drawing by Karnig Thomasian. Right: Portrait of a police officer who perished on 9/11. Pencil drawing by Karnig Thomasian. Below left: The charcoal drawing that won the first prize of the 2008 National Veterans Creative Arts Festival. such as Maro and Anahid Ajemian, the co-founders of the Friends of Armenian Music Committee in the 1940s. The Ajemian sisters were closely linked with the avant-garde composers of the time and invited them along. Thoma- sian’s memories from his teenage years include watching composer John Cage prepare a piano for one of his famous pieces, which is played by altering the sounds via various objects placed in the strings of the instrument. Composer Alan Hovhaness, another Ajemian protégé, was also a frequent visitor to the recitals. As a former POW, Thomasian eventually acknowledged suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. He joined the American Ex-Prisoners of War Organization and received treatment from VA therapists. With the support of his immediate family and other veterans, he made it through it all. Today Thomasian is a lecturer and an accredited National Service Officer for the American Ex-Prisoners’ Garden State (NJ) chapter. Throughout the years, he has helped over 50 combat veterans with their needs, including getting their disability compensations. In addition to helping former soldiers and POWs, Thomasian regularly lectures in schools and teaches drawing classes in an art school in New Jersey. f connect: portraitsbykarnig.com 1.va.gov/vetevent/caf/2008/Default.cfm axpow.org/ C4 Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008
The thrill of flying high Hrair Hawk’s aerial photographs of Armenia by Betty Panossian-Ter Sarkissian YEREVAN – The result of Hrair Hawk Khatcherian’s flight over Armenia is a dynamic new collection of photographs which were on display in October, at the Children’s Gallery in Yerevan. “Heaven on Earth” Heaven on Earth: Armenia Hawk’s Eye View will be the title of Hawk’s album, a compilation of aerial photographs of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The album will be the seventh by Hawk. It will include a magnificent photo of Lake Sevan, where the blue of the water and the sky mingle with the beige hues of the terrain. It will most probably grace the cover of the album. Lake Sevan “is a beautiful symbol of Armenia. At the same time, this particular photo will surprise the viewer. I want my audience to see the pictures and say ‘This couldn’t be Armenia,” Hawk says. The element of surprise is what makes this collection even more interesting. Unusual locations, hidden views of high mountains and colorful visuals of terrain punctuate the photos of churches from new angles and aerial photos of historical monuments. In a marvelous picture, gray dots encircled with the white of the snow are joined with canals Great Aghi and Small Aghi Lakes. of water shaping an out-of-the-ordinary pattern. The photo was taken from the skies above Karvajar, in Karabakh. “The melted snow has no place to go and it forms small ponds and canals, which dry as soon as the weather gets warmer. It looks like an abstract painting,” explains Hawk. From Karvajar comes another beauty, the photos of Great Aghi and Small Aghi Lakes. Flying over the Armenian sky, Hrair Hawk is once again drawn to churches and has photographed them from angles never before seen in pictures. “One needs to fly to get Garni in a photograph from this angle,” says Hawk pointing to a photo. He has also captured a rare picture of Khor Virab, the result of his daring flight as near to the Turkish border as possible. There is a shot of the ancient church of Noravank pictured from the same altitude as the mountains surrounding the monastery, which has more than a single message. “When one approaches the monastery from the ground, it overwhelms the visitor with its grandeur, while from this height it looks as if it is gulped by the mountain. It is simply a small particle to the magnificence of nature,” explains Hawk. For this project, Hawk has partnered with the Armenia Tree Project (ATP). Many of the photos on exhibit, including the one of Noravank, show swaths of land that have become green zones thanks to the ATP. Another such photo is that of the dome of St. Gevorg Monastery of Moughni, nestled among lush trees also planted by ATP. The same photo embraces the city of Ashtarak with Mount Ararat in the background. Land observed from the sky has no border lines. “With this exhibition I Temple of Garni. want to make a point that in the sky we really are liberated. There are no boundaries,” states the artist. Hawk is also interested in showing the life that bursts from these lands he has flown over. There is a photograph showing a modest and comfortable farm house amid green fields and orchards which could be anywhere in the world, except that it is in Armenia. Another one draws a contrast between life and death; in the foreground are khachkars (stone crosses) of Noratuz, those masterfully carved headstones of the long-forgotten deceased, separated by a green line of agricultural life in the background. Hawk first started to take aerial pictures back in 1982, when he was a pilot in the United States. His first opportunity to take a helicopter flight over Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh was in 1995, when “I noticed that Armenia indeed has a very interesting topography,” says Hawk. The result of that first aerial journey was the album Flying Hye published in 2006. This new aerial compilation will complete the circle of Hawk’s flight over the Armenian landscape. “For my journeys over Armenia, I have to thank the Ministry of Defense of Armenia, which provided me with a helicopter, and the members of the crew, who we eager to assist me in my journey,” he tells the Armenian Reporter. Hawk plans to fly over the Armenian skies sometime this fall, to capture the autumn beauty of the Armenian landscape. “I will concentrate on the region of Lory, where thick forests will surely display beautiful shades of red and gold,” he says with a glint in his eye. “Words cannot describe the thrill of my flight. I can only attempt to express them through my photographs,” says Hawk. f Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 8, 2008 C5
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Evelina Galli - Armenian Reporter

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