Tikijian's mixed-media piece "Double Helix" reflects aspects of Saroyan's personal life.

Artist Carol Tikijian's 15-year journey via a black-and-white dotted line has led her to the planetary steps of William Saroyan.

In a vivid contemporary exhibit at the Fresno Art Museum, Tikijian's six door-sized, gold-accented mixed media panels -- as well as her intricate black-and-white drawings -- thrive against the deep-hued red walls of the gallery. One panel is called "Come On-a My House," a cozy memory of an Armenian grandmother's home: a red Persian rug; pomegranates piled in a large, antique pot; a small kitchen device used to make Armenian coffee; and a quilt popping with small squares in all kinds of color.

Of course, that title also is the name of the famous Rosemary Clooney 1951 hit song written by Saroyan and his cousin, Ross Bagdasarian. As you spend time in the exhibit, the lively tune plays in a regular rotation. Clooney's warm voice is a connective point for this art that is a biographical take on the famous writer, his Armenian ancestry and his world.

The other link flows from Tikijian's black-and-white dotted line. She says she started using the line as a metaphor for a journey or a path. So, in this show, it follows Saroyan's path. It's there, running down the right side of "Come On-a My House." Or providing a large circle for a floor installation marking moments in Saroyan's life.

The exhibit, which ends Sunday, is called "Why Abstract? William Saroyan's Dotted Line." The term "Why Abstract?" is the title of a 1945 book mostly written by Hilaire Hiler (sounds like, as Time magazine once said, kill-care smiler). Hiler was many things, including a painter, a musician and a psychologist whose paths crossed with Saroyan. Tikijian says that Saroyan contributed to the book, writing about how artists feel more deeply and sense things more deeply.

The show comes in a year celebrating the centennial of Saroyan's birth in Fresno in 1908. Tikijian's aim is that visitors leave the gallery with an enhanced insight into Saroyan.

"I don't expect people to understand what I'm doing cold," says Tikijian, who has been an exhibiting artist for more than 30 years and is a member of Gallery 25 in Fresno. "I know that's not going to happen, but if they just glean an essence that might lead them toward an understanding -- of, in this case, William Saroyan -- that's what I hope to do."

Tikijian's art here is accessible. "I like art that is open-ended," she says. "I like people to bring their own interpretations to it. Oftentimes, I'm pleasantly surprised by what someone gets out of it that I didn't put into it intentionally."

The exhibit sprung from an invitation by Jacquelin Pilar, the museum's curator. "Carol has such an immediate sense of living life in a full way," says Pilar, who adds that there's a "real vibrancy" to Tikijian and her art.

Pilar says visitors "absolutely love" the exhibit. It also will be shown in the fall at a Merced arts center.

"Her work is expressive, and I felt that she brought to this work the kind of characteristics that Saroyan also brought to his work."

Which brings us back to "Come On-a My House." Tikijian says she was thinking of what her grandmother's home was like in creating the panel. And Saroyan is there, not just in the title of the song he co-wrote or in the lyrics painted in the background, but physically as well. A framed photo of him as an older man sits on what looks like the end of an aged, narrow white-wooden table. Next to the picture is a glass jar of pennies.

Tikijian, who did a lot of research for her exhibit, explains the pennies connect to Saroyan's brilliant short story, "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," about a young writer dying of starvation. She says the main character finds a penny in a gutter and wonders how many pennies it takes to stay alive.

Those are the kind of layers that deepen this exhibition. The floor installation, for example, includes a Saroyan bicycle on loan from the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, and two piles of earth, one from Fresno and one from Armenia. Tikijian says his ashes are buried in both places.

"It is like the beginning and ending of his life," she says. "And earth is an important part of his writing. He talks about the earth and being from the Central Valley."

There also is a crate of lettuce, marking the time Tikijian saw Saroyan. She was a student at California State University, Fresno, in the early 1970s. Saroyan spoke to a club to which she belonged, and several agriculture majors were there as well. She remembers Saroyan spoke in support of farm labor leader Cesar Chavez's lettuce boycott, and the ag students stomped out: "It really stayed with me."

The gallery is divided into two spaces. Nine exquisite and intricate black-and-white drawings line the walls toward the back. They feature circular and labyrinth patterns -- representing, for example, Saroyan's bicycle wheels and travel, meditative journeys and direction. Feathers symbolize him as a writer and a free spirit. His written words also are incorporated into these designs, as they are in the panels.

It was important to Tikijian to present a fully dimensional Saroyan. Hence, there's the black-and-white dotted line looping around a pair of female legs adorned with a youthful black polka-dotted gold skirt in "Double Helix." The panel reflects aspects of his personal life, chiefly his relationship with his two children and their mother, Carol Marcus, whom he twice married and divorced.

There's also the homage to Armenian people in another panel that evokes their spirit and strength. The piece includes a powerfully written passage by Saroyan about his ancestry; the number 1915, which is the year that the Armenian genocide started; and a pair of black boots representing those forced out of their homes and, in many cases, to their deaths.

All these aspects are elements in the 72-year timeline of Saroyan's life. As Tikijian says: "I wanted to show a complete William Saroyan."

---
© Copyright 2008, THE FRESNO BEE, CALIF.