Vickie's Turn

Prof. Victoria Rico-Costina of the University of the Philippines Baguio gave me another few minutes of fame at the opening of my second solo show at the Cafe of our affections. She was partly my inspiration in coming up with a title and a poem (in lieu of the traditional artist's statement) for my show--she has consistently shown compassion for God's little creatures, adopting stray cats, cleaning and fattening them up. I must really be a bundle of insecurities to cajole friends to go onstage and say these few words about a struggling painter:

My husband happens to work at the Camp John Hay Manor and so after Babeth Lolarga and the Baguio Aquarelle Society she is affiliated with set up their exhibit at the Hotel, I asked Ruel if he had seen Babeth’s works. He said that he had seen them, and commented: “Kasla nga ubing.” By then I had come to see some of the paintings, collages, pottery and other art projects that Babeth had been submitting for her Fine Arts classes at UP Baguio. True enough, one would see that the distinctive mark of a Babeth Lolarga work is happy: a generous, large-hearted, and intentional choice to see the colors, the imaginative possibilities, and telling details of things and subjects that surround her life as a journalist, poet and artist.

We at UP Baguio are proud of her work and the example that she has set among our fine arts students and faculty: that of disciplined and inspired work. Her work ethic is hard to equal--- while she has had to meet the demands of fulltime studies--- she has also continued to write essays, poetry, features and daily entries for her voluminous personal journals. She has kept a Baguio writers group going, doing writers workshops in various venues in the city.

We thank her then for sharing her many talents with us here in Baguio and at UP, and we especially thank her for the warmth and generosity of spirit that lights up her canvases. Of course, on a personal note, I must say that I couldn’t miss this exhibit because of the cats in her paintings.

We congratulate Babeth and we want to say that we look forward to more exhibits like this, here at the Café by the Ruins. We also congratulate her teachers Liza Ilagan, Fara Manuel, Manolo Sicat and Norman Chow. And not least: kudos to Rolly Fernandez, Babeth’s hardworking “wife” and financier.

To Babeth we say: may the cats in your fruit salad increase! Photo by EV ESPIRITU