Monday, April 20, 1998
Independent Images
ART: Artist Saeed Siadat finds a unique niche for his
comprehensive
collection right here in Westwood
By Nerissa Pacio
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The Armand Hammer Sidewalk sparkles. Borders casts its looming
corporate shadow. And movie theater lines encircle the blocks. But
buried beneath the bricks of Westwood’s money-making moguls lies
Unique Images Fine Art Studio. Sometimes just a little something
goes a very long way.
Like the Sisterhoods that may get lost amongst the book giants,
the seven-year-old mini art-gallery on Westwood Blvd. might go
unnoticed by passers by. However, owner, independent artist and
private art instructor Saeed Siadat’s seeming immunity to such
commercialism is evident in every sweeping brush stroke he
creates.
"I really don’t care about selling what people demand," Siadat
says. "I don’t follow what people need. I’m an artist, not a
business man."
While such idealistic, lofty sentiments might appear
questionable from an instructor who teaches everyone from UCLA art
students to hobby-seeking professionals, stepping into Siadat’s
studio crystallizes the portrait of his philosophy.
Entering through an aged, wrought iron gate into a courtyard,
the gallery door on the right opens into a whitewashed room with
polished oak wooden floors – a natural setting for Siadat’s
contrastingly vibrant paintings to inhabit. Lit only by beams of
sunlight filtering in from the bay windows and a glowing fireplace
warming the room, Unique Images feels more like mom’s living room
than an art studio.
In fact, the very nature of his collection appears personal, as
if a collector purchased an array of several artists’ favorite
works or perhaps provided a venue for displaying a group show. Call
it artistic schizophrenia. Or creative genius. But whatever it is,
Siadat claims no disorder. In fact, he claims only the sole name of
"creation" for the spectrum of works.
"I use all types of media from ink and oil pastels to watercolor
and chalk," Siadat says. "My earlier period focused on realism
whereas my later works are more abstract. I go in cycles where my
old styles might come back again."
Reminiscent of M.C. Escher’s intricate art of visual game woven
into an imagistic Picasso panorama, Siadat’s most recent work
swirls and dives, leaps and careens off the canvas. One of his
favorite paintings, titled "Into Unconscious," blends heavy,
primary colors into tortured, peaceful and fragmented images of
human faces and figures, symbolizing the labyrinths of people’s
minds.
"(Siadat) renders messages about human beings," says Reza
Goharzad, a long-time friend and one-time art student of Siadat.
"’Innocence’ shows the freedom and innocence of the soul."
However universal a theme Siadat offers, from realistic pictures
of sullen children, flowers and dew-dropped lilies to angled,
jagged and simultaneously soft abstract renderings of the human
spirit, Siadat encompasses his cultural roots into his work.
In the large mystical painting titled "Nourez," Persian for "New
Day," a mythological messenger of the New Year floats in to mark
the first day of spring, or Persian New Year.
"(Siadat) uses may messages from old Persian philosophy and
culture of Iran. In ‘Nourez,’ he symbolizes nature’s beginning, the
birth of Spring," Goharzad says.
With the homogenous, film-inundated Westwood neighborhood
seemingly lacking the nooks and crannies of Berkeley’s Telegraph
Ave. or the array of shopping and eating choices of Santa Barbara’s
State Street, Unique Images offers a little of the undiscovered to
this corner of Los Angles which, at times, feels overturned.
Siadat’s studio reveals something new -the artist’s reason for
creating.
"If you are a so-called ‘part-time’ artist, then art is simply
your hobby," Siadat says. "For me, art is what I do. Art is
everything."
ART: Unique Images Art Studio is located at 1334 Westwood Blvd.
For more information call (310) 470-7107.
"Into Unconscious," by Saeed Siadat, is one of the artist’s
favorites from his collection.
Photos courtesy of Fine Art Studio
Saeed Siadat’s "Innocence" is on display at the Unique Images
gallery.