Varteni was born in Istanbul on june 24,
1953 to an Armenian family. Her schoolings, first at the Armenian
grade school then at the Austrian Sankt Georg Gymnasium, significantly
contributed to her early development. She arrived in Boston,
MA at age 16, attended Lynn Classical High, enrolled at Cal
Arts in Los Angeles and in 1979 received her BFA from the
University of Central Florida (UCF). Her biography has been published
in the Who is Who of American Women 1999
visions of rememberance . .
Across there... these beautiful princess islands...almost everyday i journeyed to them while
biting my juicy sweet peach which was dripping all over my fingers and my eyes close to my mind
were distancing themselves in that horizon beyond these islands...- Once one learns swimming in
those shores, one goes on -it is not a swimming back and forth-it is swimming continuously
till you reached the first...the second ... the third...the forth in the longing sea of Marmara.
One day it just happened that i crossed the ocean.. the big calling ocean named Atlantic...the
gigantic waves gulped my islands and i lost my peach no more biting of that sweet juicy
peach...the gluey wetness.. the sweet taste of it along with my magical islands sank in
the depth of my soul and it rushes to my rescue whenever my breath is caged. Thanks to my third
eye i see myself swimming to my islands...this recovered sensation pinches me so...i begin to
see new magical shores to arrive....
A voice.. an expression in the eye.. a sound of wave...the smell of the sea...a breeze...flock
of birds...evokes moments of life. The endless remembrance of a golden childhood or is it the
pain... the pain that lingers me to the visions of the past-the sacrificial past to the
present- lives merging into the future--the language is the dilemma -the forgotten voices
of memory sways its way into the waves of my soul - body.
Good morning "Pari Louys" "Kind Light" in Armenian. I greet you kind light ...I need you "pari
louys"...Dignity is the louys -Dignity in you...without it you are a Xerox copy.. bare ..
defeated in the homogenization of our gloriously civilized world.
To love to paint to dream to make money to eat healthy to dance to sing to think to say
everything to say nothing to understand do you understand? What is understanding ...it has
no senses...still yearning stands under. Love, the living moment of who you are...all the
other senses can stream into the expression of some pulse.
You earthly wind! you blew this colorful leave to my window...i recognize this golden leaf
from the age of two...