A Journal of Sketches Gives a Glance into an Artist’s Past

Looking at sketches from an artist’s notebook is always a little like sneaking a glance at a personal diary: What’s glimpsed are the private workings of one person’s mind.

But if the artist is Iranian-born and a traveler, such sketches can also take on cross-cultural dimensions when they are placed on public display.

On view through July 6 at the Tiffany Theaters in West Hollywood is a series of etchings by the architect and artist Babak Torkian, who left Iran for North America at the age of 15.

The etchings derive from pen-and-ink journal drawings that are Torkian’s impromptu responses to international news, to his periodic far-flung travels, or to events of his heart.

As the artist described them, the line drawings address everything from the position of women in Islamic culture to the image-consciousness of Los Angeles. (In one piece, headless figures loll about, waiting for transformation, in a setting meant to suggest a hair salon.)

Several drawings were made during the Gulf War, which Torkian followed both through Persian and English news broadcasts.

“This piece is called ‘No Mask for You’--I did it when I heard on the news that the Palestinian people were being denied gas masks,” Torkian said, indicating a piece that features a detailed gas mask shown suspended to one side of an otherwise spare etching.

Another work depicts a fountain pen--an image Torkian uses to represent literary figures or journalists--upended against a wall before a firing squad of other pointed pens. Although it can have various interpretations, Torkian said, the drawing was prompted by the news that journalists were being detained in Iraq during the recent war.

However, Torkian said, while he is actually making the drawings, “I don’t think about them--I just do them and then try to figure out what was going on in my mind.”

For Torkian--who was urged to convert his notebook drawings into framed etchings by Anne Spilling, curator of the monthly art shows in the Tiffany Theaters lobby--going public with private material has proved to be an interesting exercise.

As an artist doing a drawing, he said, “No matter how private you get, you’re still perhaps hoping that someone will see it. You still look at it with a third eye.”

“No Water No Moon,” etchings and drawings by Babak Torkian, through July 6 at the Tiffany Theaters, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 543-2736. Open 1-5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and during evening performance times.