Lena Avakyan

Lena Benikov came as a Jewish refugee with her family from the former Soviet Union in 1990. She has a degree in World History and Art History from Kiev State University. She is using her love of art to teach 1st grade at temple Beth Israel. She works mostly with wood and paint. She lives in a beautiful 1923 home in the Northwest hills where most of her furniture was painted by her. She has a son who is graduating from Law School in Michigan and daughter who is a freshman at Regis University in Colorado. Her husband is a real-estate broker and a painter. She works for Neighborhood House as a family services coordinator helping families become self-sufficient and giving back what her family got when she arrived in Portland without friends, relatives, English and only 94 dollars.

Contact the artist: beikov@comcast.net