Liberty

The genre of contemporary Liberty art was pioneered by Peter Max. The fruit symbolize the attainments of the Protestant ethic for an Armenian Congregationalist. The work ethic’s consummation for a product of the “Melting Pot” an assimilated American 1950’s style. The different fruit symbolize the diversity of American culture with its different shapes, volumes, textures & colors. American workers producing new technologies aiding each other utilizing their Unions. The patterns of fruit photons symbolize the special energy of this unique technology.  The union of diversity mid 20th century.

Liberty is a classic symbol of freedom to me, a legal immigrant who came to America on a rusty tramp steamer in the early 1950's. I entered the U.S.of A. in Philadelphia PA, missing the Ellis Island experience. However, my first visit to New York came only a couple of years later.

When I was a child my father had an excellent job heading Haigazian College, a comfortable house & garden, a country home in Anjar, Bekaa Valley, a few miles south of the magnificent Roman ruins of Baalbek.

He read the pertinent verses in the Koran, in the original classic Arabic then translated them. “Son”, he said “I don’t want the next generation of our family to experience the trauma of the Armenian Genocide by the Muslim Turks. “Soon Lebanon will no longer be a welcoming place to Christians.”

In exchange, a new uncertain life in America, a reduced standard of living. Becoming the family of a minister. But a wonderful 50’s education beckoned, & in the 3rd grade, Miss Prowel’s class in Spencerian.

The State Department denied grandma, Miriam Tosjian Rubyan, a visa to enter America with her family. Her goodbye at the dock was one of the saddest occasions in my life. She did not survive the 5 years it took for us to become citizens & bring her to the promised land.