Saturday, December 21, 2013
2:40 AM |
A Map For an Art Tour
What is fascinating about
ARTWalk—an ongoing multi-venue exhibition of Dumaguete-based visual artists to benefit the construction of a multi-purpose building for flood survivors in Bajumpandan—is how it affords us a glimpse into the creativity that is germinating, often in serious quiet, among local artists. Given the lack of good and accessible exhibition spaces in this city, it is admittedly quite rare to see the variety of these artists’ works, and harder still to gauge their progress between even rarer exhibitions—unless you have access to their studios or their online portfolios.
And yet in one go—through the brave curatorial efforts of
Hersley-Ven Casero and
Anna Koosmann—we see an avalanche of local art arranged as a unique tour: an art walk, where you follow a map of connected exhibition spaces, discovering an antidote to the misdiagnosis of a visual art dry spell, hopping from one place to the next with the excitement of a childhood’s treasure hunt.
The idea is not new, of course. Many cities with an extensive art culture do this, often enlisting into their program a number of galleries and museums cooperating to create an urban atmosphere of the artistic. There is joy in such exercise: it seems to embrace a city, or at least a neighborhood, creating a sense of community, and one bound by a love for art.
There is art exhibited at Café Mamia as well as the older branch of The Bean Connection along Perdices Street, and at Café Memento, where you get a sprinkling of new works by Mr. Casero,
Rianne Salvarita, Stephen Abanto, Muffet Villegas, Sarah Abanto, Aida Santos, Ariane Alviola, David Immanuel Teves, among others.
Hersley-Ven Casero's An A† Dream
Ariane Alviola's Rustic
David Immanuel Teves' Saul the Dinosaur
But we started off at KRI along the midsection of Silliman Avenue where most of the Art Walk venues are concentrated, and what greets you from first entry are the works of
Iris Armogenia, whose Hinalay series of paintings is a prime example of a young artist at the cusp of fully realizing artistic vision. There is a lot of such promise, one must say, in the whole enterprise.
In The Bean Connection, for example, just a stone’s throw away from KRI, one is easily drawn to the works of
Aziza Daksla,
Beshiel Mayordomo,
Marielle Tan, and
Juhaira Daksla. There is a kind of elegant bubblegum energy to their works, as if Andy Warhol is alive and well and is swallowing the manic colors of Japanese anime. We see this reflectively rendered in Ms. Tan’s “Coffee Break,” a triptych of the pop art variety bordering on the narrative of a comic strip: the style owes much to the influence of anime sensibilities, and the story is cosmopolitan, Starbuckish, with a hint of Girls. And how else to describe Ms. Mayordomo’s “House Project”? A bespectacled girl rendered in flimsy charcoal has her memory of a Home Sweet Home childhood rained on by watercolor rain and butterflies—at once sad and colorful, like memories are. Ms. Dakla’s “Pet Series” is of the same import—a triptych in watercolor of pet selfies, groomed in hipster eyeware, which would have been safely adorable were it not for the suggestion of absurdity that the work carries. All three scream “young artists”—perhaps inchoate but stylishly so, and one is left wondering what the coming years could bring as they delve deeper into life and allow that to inform their art.
Marielle Tan's Coffee Break
Beshiel Mayordomo's House Project
Juhaira Daksla's Pet Series
Aziza Duksla's Mungaw
Over at Captain Ribbers, a bit of that whimsy is carried over in the works of
Paul Benzi Florendo I admired. In both “Gravity” and “To Infinity and Beyond,” we—and by that, Mr. Florendo means the robotic adults that we have become—are promised an extension of childhood if only we can reimagine our old fantasies of space travel and paper planes and the quirky wonders of grade school science. It is a cuddly promise, and the works have that cuddly feel, if underlined with a subtle satirical bite. But one mostly gets works of a different kind gravity that is harder to ignore: paintings that pull you in with savage grace, luring you with the beautiful and then slams you with dark ambiguities, when you look too closely.
HA Experiment’s “Stay Series”—an abstract portrait of unbearably bright primary and secondary colors—is our doorway to that kind of gravity in the other paintings. Jeanne Grace Alarcio’s “Childhood,” for example, seems simple enough at first: here is a young white-shirted girl with a flower in her hair, traipsing around with a flowing white ribbon—and yet, given those imagistic shorthand of innocence, we soon come to ask inevitable dark questions. Is that the barrel of an oversized gun she is walking on? What is with the glaring redness of the painting’s background? What does this ultimately say about childhood’s end and adulthood’s betrayals? One can only admire that kind of agile dance of meanings: warning and nostalgia all wrapped up in the same picture.
Jaycris Sisneros’ “Valentine Eye” and
Aida Espiritu’s “Lady in the Water” also contain that kind of agile dance—and in visually startling ways, both paintings seem similar in their artistic reach, although quite different in execution: both focus on figures with incidentally hidden faces, both garbed in the redness of spilled blood, and both drowning in a malaise of blue. Espiritu’s work, of course, is an impressionistic take of feminist leanings—a drowning woman impassive in her immersion in dangerous waters, while Sisneros skirts the geography of the surreal that seems to locate and define a man of the city in the middle of a hellish landscape of metropolitan living. Both are unforgiving portraits of entrapment, which cannot be said of
Anna Koosmann’s “Pagka-Pinay,” which delights in the fruity details of happier existence: here, we get an American woman’s metaphorical take of what could be the supposed earthiness of the Filipina—seeds, roots, veins, and leaves of a variety of tropical fruits—which strike me as a kind of celebration, or appreciation. Whatever it is, the work is delicious.
Paul Benzi Florendo's Gravity
Paul Benzi Florendo's To Infinity and Beyond
HA Experiment's Stay Series
Jeanne Grace Alarcio's Childhood
Aida Espiritu's Lady in the Water
Jaycris Sisneros's Valentines Eye
Anna Koosmann's Pagka-Pinay
But one work of such striking power, however, can be found in KRI. It is a collaborative project by Foundation University artists simply titled “House Project.” What you have is a series of small paintings produced under the direction of Mr. Casero that, when arranged as a group, attempts to define what “house” might mean for the individual artists. The result is an interesting collage of interpretation that promises both a showcase of expression and style. From the strictly representational to the surreal to the abstract expressionist, each small painting is a quirk of fascinating explorations, and taken together, they hold as a kind of kaleidoscope.
This is home, they all say, but individually they also say,
this is my
sense of home. Individual and collective at the same time. In a sense, “House Project” becomes a metaphor for the whole
ARTWalk itself: it is a great feat of artistic collaboration, really a festival of the local artists we should be nurturing—and collectively, they have made us take notice.
House Project
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, negros, painting
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Thursday, December 19, 2013
4:41 PM |
The Thirteen Single-Author Short Story Collections (Besides Those I've Already Mentioned in the Previous Book Meme) That Stayed Meme Coverized, in Random Order
Labels: books, life
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4:16 PM |
The Thirteen Movies That Stayed Meme Posterized, in Random Order
Labels: film, life
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3:15 PM |
The Thirteen Books That Stayed Meme Coverized, in Random Order
Labels: books, life
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Monday, December 16, 2013
3:34 PM |
Call for Manuscripts to the 53rd Silliman National Writers Workshop
The Silliman University National Writers Workshop is now accepting applications for the 53rd National Writers Workshop to be held 5—23 May 2014 at the Silliman University Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village.
This Writers Workshop is offering twelve fellowships to promising writers in the Philippines who want to have a chance to hone their craft and refine their style. Fellows will be provided housing, a modest stipend, and a subsidy to partially defray costs of their transportation.
To be considered, applicants should submit manuscripts in English on or before
15 January 2014. All manuscripts should comply with the instructions stated below. (Failure to do so will automatically eliminate their entries).
Applicants for Fiction and Creative Nonfiction fellowships should submit three to four (3-4) entries. Applicants for Poetry fellowships should submit a suite of seven to ten (7-10) poems. Applicants for Drama fellowships should submit at least one (1) One-Act Play.
Each fiction, creative nonfiction, or drama manuscript should not be more than 30 pages, double spaced. We encourage you to stay well below the 30 pages.
Manuscripts should be submitted in five (5) hard copies. They should be computerized in MS Word, double-spaced, on 8.5 x 11 inches bond paper, with approximately one-inch margin on all sides. The page number must be typed consecutively (e.g., 1 of 30, 2 of 30, and so on) at the center of the bottom margin of each page. The font should be Book Antiqua or Palatino, and the font size should be 13.
The applicant’s real name and address must appear only in the official application form and the certification of originality of works, and must not appear on the manuscripts.
Manuscripts should be accompanied by the official application form, a notarized certification of originality of works, and at least one letter of recommendation from a literature professor or an established writer. All requirements must be complete at the time of submission.
Send all applications or requests for information to Department of English and Literature, attention Prof. Ian Rosales Casocot, Workshop Coordinator, 1/F Katipunan Hall, Silliman University, 6200 Dumaguete City. For inquiries, email us at silliman.cwc@gmail.com or call 035-422-6002 loc. 350.
FILE DOWNLOADS (IN PDF):
Official Application Form
Call for Submission
Certification of Originality of Works
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, silliman, writers, writing
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Sunday, December 08, 2013
10:25 PM |
Living Towards the Answer
“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Labels: life, quotes
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Saturday, December 07, 2013
10:22 PM |
From the Preface of Celebration...
Celebration began in 2008, a few years before the golden anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, when many among the former fellows of the workshop felt that a commemorative anthology was more than fitting for the occasion. It was a testament, in book form, to how the workshop has shaped much of the national literature. But only upon the urging of Silliman University President Ben S. Malayang III in 2011 did the volume finally take shape, however, when he suggested that a special issue of
Sands & Coral could serve as that commemorative anthology.
The first thing that the editors did was to go over the list of alumni of the workshop, which was a considerable lot to consider, given what is easily an illustrious list of names culled from five decades of Philippine writing, numbering among them a few National Artists for Literature, many Palanca Hall of Famers, among others.
From among that number, we sent out invitations to contribute to those whom we felt were still prolific in the craft, asking each one to follow only one criterion for their own selection of their works to submit to the book project: they had to send in what they felt was best suited for an anthology celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.
The response was overwhelming. The works that we eventually received gave a variety of definitions to our broad imperative: quite a number sent in new works of fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction, and literary criticism, even sequential literature (in other words, “comics”); many sent in what they considered to be their best works in their outputs as writers; others sent in poems, stories, and essays dedicated to Edilberto and Edith Tiempo; still others sent in what could be called “memory pieces” of their stay in Dumaguete.
The final roster of 142 writers include Gémino H. Abad, Ceres Y.C. Abanil, Mariane A.R.T. Abuan, Reinerio A. Alba, Dean Francis Alfar, Estrella Alfon, Merlie Alunan, Isolde Amante, Alma Anonas-Carpio, Gina Apostol, César Ruìz Aquino, Carlomar Arcangel, Francisco Arcellana, Juaniyo Arcellana, Carlos Ojeda Aureus, Isabela Banzon, Romeo Baquiran Jr., F.H. Batacan, Ronald Baytan, John Bengan, Herminio S. Beltran Jr., Merlinda Bobis, Rica Bolipata-Santos, Lilledeshan Bose, Rofel G. Brion, Douglas Candano, Jose Wendell Capili, Miro Frances D. Capili, F. Jordan Carnice, Shane Carreon, Ian Rosales Casocot, Erwin Castillo, Albert B. Casuga, Mark Anthony Cayanan, Luna Sicat Cleto, Mikael de Lara Co, Elsa Victoria Martinez Coscolluela, Vincent Coscolluela, Conchitina Cruz, Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz, Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Ricardo de Ungria, Lourd de Veyra, Nino Soria de Veyra, Noelle Leslie de la Cruz, Ruel S. De Vera, Ida Anita del Mundo, Daryll Jane Delgado, Leoncio P. Deriada, Ophelia A. Dimalanta, Jacob Walse Dominguez, Simeon Dumdum Jr., Indira Endaya, Antonio Enriquez, Marjorie Evasco, Aida Rivera Ford, Mo Francisco, Diana T. Gamalinda, Eric Gamalinda, J. Neil C. Garcia, Jeneen Garcia, Eugene Gloria, Christine Godinez-Ortega, Ma. Romina M. Gonzalez, Vicente Garcia Groyon III, Nerisa del Carmen Guevara, Ramil Digal Gulle, Ken Ishikawa, Carljoe Javier, Nick Joaquin, Ana Maria Katigbak-Lacuesta, Rebecca E. Khan, Marne L. Kilates, Anthony L. Kintanar, Francesca Kwe, Marie La Viña, Angelo R. Lacuesta, Marra PL Lanot, Jose Lansang Jr., Gian Lao, Susan S. Lara, Gabriela Lee, Ricky Lee, AnLi Llego, Francis Macansantos, Monica Macansantos, Priscilla Supnet Macansantos, Petra Magno, Connie Jan Maraan, Edgar B. Maranan, Sasha Martinez, Maningning Miclat, Grace R. Monte de Ramos, V.E. Carmelo D. Nadera Jr., James Iain Neish, Wilfrido Nolledo, Michael U. Obenieta, Charlson Ong, Charisse-Fuschia A. Paderna, R. Torres Pandan, Gerard Pareja, Allan Pastrana, Bj Patino, Maria Elena Paterno, Ma. Elena L. Paulma, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Jose Victor Peñaranda, Padmapani L. Perez, Nicholas B. Pichay, Kerima Polotan, Allan Popa, Baryon Tensor Posadas, Danton Remoto, Danilo Francisco Reyes, Jun Cruz Reyes, Dinah Roma-Santuri, Ninotchka Rosca, Allen Samsuya, Anna Felicia C. Sanchez, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, Tara FT Sering, Oscar Serquina Jr., Vincenz Serrano, Myrza Sison, Lakambini Sitoy, Angelo Suarez, Artemio M. Tadena, Anthony L. Tan, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Edith L. Tiempo, May Tobias-Papa, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, Joel M. Toledo, Linda Ty-Casper, Naya Valdellon, Janet B. Villa, Martin Villanueva, Bobby Flores Villasis, Niccolo Vitug, Januar Ernesto Yap, Ernesto Superal Yee, and Alfred Yuson.
There was, finally, no one theme that emerged: the writers wrote about domestic disputes, and epiphanies gained from travel, and gender reassignment surgery, and suggestions of the horror of pedophilia, and the blossoming of first love, and the travails of Manny Pacquiao. The works ranged from traditional narratives to literary experimentations of the first order.
Susan S. Lara sent in a remembrance she wrote of Mom Edith—a piece that she had read for the memorial of the National Artist at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2011, after Dr. Tiempo passed away. Padmapani Perez, on the other hand, sent in an essay that recalled her encounter with Mom Edith years after her own workshop fellowship, as they ruminate over a short poem Padma had written and had asked Dr. Tiempo to read.
But the workshop was not only about the Tiempos. Part of the magic of the Dumaguete workshop is how it has come to be a good mix of all the literary influences in the Philippines—not merely something with a Silliman University mark (which is a tradition steeped in New Criticism), but also the mark of the kinds of writing that was coming out of the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, the University of Santo Tomas, Far Eastern University, San Carlos University in Cebu, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, among many others—Dumaguete’s panelists, after all, were coming from all of these academic centers of writing. So there are pieces celebrating some of these mentors, most notably with J. Neil C. Garcia’s essay dissecting the influence of Tomasian poet Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta on his poetics.
What is also interesting are the works included in this volume written by mentors who have long since passed on. We have included long-lost stories and poems by Edilberto Tiempo, Edith Tiempo, Francisco Arcellana, and Wilfrido Nolledo. Courtesy of the estate of Nick Joaquin, we are including a rousing essay about the strange visit of The Beatles to Manila in the 1960s, which paints a perfect portrait of the Philippines from that decade. We have also included works by the late Jose Lansang Jr., Artemio Tadena, Ernesto Superal Yee, Diana Gamalinda, Maningning Miclat, among others.
In the end, this book becomes, indeed, a “celebration” of the varieties of literary expression fostered by the Dumaguete experience of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. It has been fifty years, but the dream and the legacy of the Tiempos will live on forever.
Sands & Coral 2011-2013
and the special literary issue of the Silliman Journal
are now available for P500 each. Please email us at silliman.cwc@gmail.com for orders and queries. Please deposit the amount + shipping cost over LBC (to be determined over email correspondence, depending on the number of copies) to the BPI bank account of Prof. Warlito Caturay Jr. at 1086-1345-38. Please include in your email a scanned copy of the deposit slip. Labels: art and culture, books, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, philippine literature, silliman, writers, writing
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