It is Nature’s doing: My Friend Levon Jamgochian

Vahe H. Apelian

 

Starred LtoR: Levon Jamgochian and Vahe H Apelian

I posted my first blog on March 3, 2017. Consequently I note its fourth anniversary with a celebratory blog dedicated to my elementary school classmate Levon Jamgochian’s remarkable achievement, as an artist be it as a painter, printmaker, sculptor, ceramist, and a designer. 

Levon and I were elementary school classmates in the Sourp Nshan Armenian School in Beirut. The school organized a student art exhibit under the supervision of our art teacher Antranig Ghoubigian. The students exhibited their art work which was mostly produced by sawing thin wooden boards along different designs and then putting the parts together to form a cage, a cart, a house or what not. Levon carried the day. As an impressionable kid, I remained at owe at the art works he produced which stood far apart from mine.

We also shared a habit and that was collecting stamps. I kept the habit to this day and after I came to the U.S., I painstakingly put together almost a complete collection of American stamps since 1976, the year the U.S. of America celebrated the bicenentennial of its founding. I happened to land in the Kennedy Airport as another immigrant on July 9, a few days after the July 4 celebrations. The tell-tell signs of the July 4^th celebrations were still around. Levon’s father dealt with Swiss watch. It would not surprise me that the Helvetia stamps I have in my collection are the ones he gave me from his father’s business correspondences. Where else could I have gotten a half a century old  Helvetia stamps in my stamp collection?

There was one more mischief we did. I would call it mischief and not stealing, although it was a stealing of sort. From the Gloria’s store, next to the Sourp Nshan School, we stole a green bean pod or two. Should you pay attention, you will note that one of its ends points a bit upward with a pointed end which often time has a protruding filament. Its other end is where it attaches itself to the plant, which usually is tilted a bit downward. Levon fashioned from the green fava bean pods beautiful birds. He fashioned two legs, darkened two spots for painted eyes on the two sides of the pointed end that served as its head with the thin filament serving as the bird’s beak, brushed the body with paint and thus there stood a bird!. 

We remained classmates just for a few years. Afterwards he disappeared from my life and I did not see him but Facebook connected us a few years ago. I am not sure who initiated the connection but what surprised me when we got connected was that Levon remembered so much about my parental family and me. I had completely forgotten that he had also visited our house as kids do. I also learned that after completing the third grade in Sourp Nshan, his parents had him attend Melkonian Institute in Cyprus for a year and then had him enrolled at Hovagimian-Manougian School, which was situated right across Sourp Nshan but I have no recollection of meeting him while he attended the Hovagimian-Manougian. After my middle school graduation from Sourp Nshan, I stated attending the Armenian Evangelical College High School but Levon dropped out of Hovagimian to pursue his calling. He attended Venice Academy of Fine Arts and from there, other art institutions and in 1968 he graduated from Brera Academy of Fine Arts, in Milan. His graduation theses were: “ARMENIAN MINIATURES (from the origins to the 14^th century), HOW TO LOOK AT ART WORK (with analytic approach).

Social and biological scientists have often wandered. Is it the nature that shapes a person or is it nurture? Surely both play important roles. But in case of Levon, I can attest that it was his nature that shaped him. His innate calling was to be an artist and an artist he became. True to his calling he has given his first solo art exhibit in Beirut, when he was in his teens, an eighteen years old lad .

The love of art has taken him around the world giving exhibits, such as in Armenia, Canada, England, France, Italy, Lebanon, Russia, Ukraine and the United Stes of America. His art works remain in permanent exhibit in many museums and galleries worldwide. His accomplishments are too many to list here. I invite interested readers to browse LevonJ.com to better get acquainted with his art works.

Last but not the least, last year Levon’s son Arec was voted as one of the promising young Armenian men in science under the age of 30 worldwide. After graduating Magna Cum Laude in Physics and Summa Cum Laude in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland, where the family resides, Arec completed his Masters degree in Aeronautics at Stanford University where he currently is a candidate for a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and robotics.

I wish Levon and his son Arec continued success in their chosen fields. After all, their vocations converge. There is science in art and there surely is an orderly artistry in the universe scientists attempt to decipher.