Building the earth house the ‘bayanihan’ way

For a little more than P500,000, the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary in Baguio City built its very own Earth House. Photo by EV ESPIRITU

Building the earth house the ‘bayanihan’ way

New Baguio destination: Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary

Maryknoll campsite where bonfires are allowed if the reason is good, like storytelling for children. Photo by EV Espiritu

New Baguio destination: Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary

My deaconess friend and her pressed flowers

Toottee's art of pressing flowers

Although I maintain 34 Pinterest boards, I am not a do it yourself person. I'm actually clumsy. Ask my family.

So I've always admired people like Toottee Chanco Pacis who makes her own greeting cards, her breakfast bread, her taco shells, etc.

And she also writes sermons and articles here and there. Recently I invited her to stand as guest of honor along with Perla Macapinlac, ICM, two deeply spiritual persons I associate with my visits to Baguio.

Toottee read an invocation before Perla opened (by flinging a door open wide) my solo show ("Sampayan Blues" ends on Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Sanctuary Gallery of the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary in Campo Sioco, Baguio). Like me when asked to say something in public, Toottee prefers to write down her thoughts so she doesn't meander from the subject.

These words of hers are my prayer for all for today. the 10th of November.

Oh Lord God,

We thank you for the gift of life.

We thank you for providing for all our needs, including the gifts you have given each of us.

We thank you for occasions like this afternoon's show where we can once again enjoy your creations on canvas and paper.

We thank you for the mag-lola, Babeth and Kai, for a unique collaboration and their family: Kimi, Lolo Rolly, and Auntie Ida for letting it happen.

We thank you for the people present--friends and relations who came to grace this exhibit with their encouragement and support.

Lord, teach us to appreciate and be grateful for the beauty of your creations may they be ordinary and simple.

As the Good Book says, "Establish, Lord, the work of your hands that we may indeed glorify your name."

Lord, I thank you for Babeth.

Amen.

Feedback

Artists and would-be artists don't just live on the occasional sales alone. We also like to receive feedback from the audience. I was able to get some--naturally they're from friends who dropped by the ongoing exhibition "Sampayan Blues" at the Sanctuary Gallery of Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary in Campo Sioco, Baguio. The show is still up until Nov. 14.

Some other friends couldn't make it up (that's too much of an imposition on them), but I shared my photos of the works. Feedback they were generous with. It was enough to keep my going until I decide to return to my paints and brushes and paint for a future show and cause.

Thank you, Universe, especially for the gift of friendship that includes the virtue of encouragement.

"Kai's Magical Day," acrylic on canvas paper, collection of Robert Abaño.

Hello Babeth,

Saw your exhibit yesterday at Maryknoll. Your works are very original and different, never boring and very witty!

Congratulations! My favorite is the one with a vase and a sun on the upper right corner. Parang playful na van Gogh. :-)

Keep on painting and have a beautiful day ahead!

Lingling Maranan-Claver

"Poured My Heart Out and This Is What I Get," mixed media on canvas paper

Hi Babeth we really enjoyed your exhibit even if Dan and I were the last-comers. Ang ganda talaga! Remember nung nasa fine arts pa tayo, you used to tell me, pano ba gagawin ko sa drawing ko, walang depth. Sabi ko sa yo nun, ano ka, maganda nga e, parang folk art. Ngayon, hindi ka lang folk art, a la Picasso ka na! Gusto ni Dan yung geisha, at ako gusto ko nung Poured my heart...

Mina Rimando

Top: "Finding My Sea Legs"; bottom: "Fish for Dinner," acrylic on paper, collaborations with Kai Fernandez

Thank for sharing the fotos of the paintings in your exhibit, and the sentiments that went with the preparations for the exhibit, with your usual exquisite writing.

Your paintings are wonderful, with a wonderland look and feel about them, and yet with social messages that can't be missed.

Cora Patarata

"Light as a Kite My Angel Feels," acrylic on canvas paper

Babeth,

Congratulations on your current solo exhibit!! Too bad I couldn't make it to Baguio to see those works first-hand. I was left pondering and anticipating with trepidation, Lando's would-be handiwork as it wound its way across my own part of the north. I was also wondering how it would affect your scheduled opening. But thank God our place was spared the worst, and your exhibit too, went on as announced!

You make it so easy and uncomplicated, talking about the process of creation in your statement. I am sure a great deal of thought and planning went into it. And the seeming uncomplicatedness is what endears those works to us, your readers. I personally like the honesty and the child-like touch that infuse those pieces.

Here's to more works in the offing!

Al Vicente

Congratulations, Babeth! How your imagination flies (taking us with it)!

Hugs,
Princess Nemenzo

Just get it done

"Don't think about making ART, just get it done." - Andy Warhol

I don't think Kai Myknonos Fernandez, age four and six months, knows Andy from Adam, but she sure practices what he tells fearful adults to do.

I'm featuring today two collaborations we did for "Sampayan Blues," an art (there, I used the sacred word "art") exhibition ongoing until Nov. 14 at the Santuary Gallery of Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary in Campo Sioco, Baguio City.

What I did was to collect her paintings and drawings. I enlarged the drawings, superimposing them on the colored background, then lined them in thick acrylic paints so their shapes will look more distinct. Later, I added some verses about those figures. Kind of like chromatext or ekphrasis poetry.

"Lavender and Blue Storm," mixed media on paper

give me lavender
give me blue
has the storm of colors stopped
look! the wind
carried off
your friend
Serene McJean

"Oval and Round," mixed media on paper

roundly let me
circle you,
darling dumpling,
dear sugar
replacement
let me oval
this arm
to fit you,
you cookie dough
cut into
your mother's likeness

Towards more whimsy and innocence

Following is my artist's statement accompanying my ninth solo exhibition "Sampayan Blues." I let some weeks go by after the Oct. 14 opening, including the aftermath of Typhoon Lando so I don't appear insensitive to the loss of lives and property of others. But I did make a commitment to the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary (MES) in whose The Sanctuary Gallery the show is on display that I would do my "bestest" to promote and market the show.

Proceeds from the sale of all-new, 2015 works all go to the sanctuary in its environmental conservation mission and in the upkeep of its new chapel. "Sampayan Blues" is on show until Nov. 24 so those coming up to Baguio for the semestral and Halloween break can add it to their cultural tripping. Enjoy some of the paintings on exhibit.

In the middle of it all is an installation not unlike a child's crib mobile with a wash basin at the bottom. There is a portrait of the artist cut out from a chip board and the products of her imagination are floating over her head. Gotta see it to believe it. For the installation, I am greatly indebted to visual artists EV Espiritu and Clem Delim for helping out in the conceptualization and execution. Thanks, guys!

The MES is located at 25 North Santo Tomas Road, Campo Sioco, Baguio City.

“A Geisha Dreams”
40.5 x 50 cms.
Mixed media on canvas paper

“Be Light, Be Salt, Be Seamstress, Be Doll”
40.5 x 50 cms.
Acrylic on canvas paper

“Kids on Cat Mountain”
40.5 x 50 cms.
Acrylic on paper canvas

“My Dress for the Intergalactic Ball Hangs There”
50 x 40.5 cms
Acrylic on paper canvas

“Poured My Heart Out and This is What I Get”
40.5 x 50 cms.
Mixed media on paper canvas

“Light as a Kite My Angel Feels”
61 x 45.5 cms.
Acrylic on canvas paper

“Storm Surge”
45.5 x 58 cms.
Mixed media on canvas

“The Laughing Matryoshkas”
61 x 45.5 cms.
Acrylic on canvas paper

“Paisley Shower in the Year of the Sheep”
61 x 45.5 cms.
Mixed media on canvas paper

“Picasso Moment”
23 x 30.2 cm
Mixed media on paper

With collaborating artist EV Espiritu

When the Lolarga-Fernandez family moved up to Baguio in June 1992 for a fresh start, the major adjustment the fulltime homemaker had to make was ensuring there were enough dry clothes for all. Hardly had the freshly wrung laundry been pinned for drying on the clothesline and exposure to the morning sun when the skies would turn treacherously gray and the monsoon cometh.

A friend’s practical advice was: “Have a lot of hangers ready.”
“Sampayan Blues” is partly inspired by the past memory of a housewife hauling in the laundry and hanging them inside the house when the rains pour, then hauling them outdoors again when the downpour stops. It was a cat and mouse game that went on until an automatic washing machine helped solve the drying problem.

Baguio’s monsoon brings days and nights of wind and rain, sometimes without let-up. Wet laundry takes longer to dry and becomes smelly, walls and shoes become moldy, moods are subject to the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Painting had become a way of managing SAD, art allowing the soul to roam freely even in confined quarters.

Every mother is a working mother, no doubt. Even if a painter works from home, there are duties to be addressed: dry laundry to fold and distribute to respective family members’ cabinets, a meal to prepare, a young child to be minded, to keep company with while the television is on.

Or the child is invited to join in the mixing of colors and the forming of shapes. Inevitably, that outer world of floors strewn with toys and unfinished activities (both child and adult coloring books and pencils) impinge on one’s consciousness. Images of whimsy and innocence find themselves on the canvases that look like pages from a child’s Book of Days.

Behind each painting are the painter’s scribbled, journal-like notes on the making of each work. These “doodles” and “notes” also serve the function of authentication papers for each work. The canvas sheets after all were torn from a pad of canvas paper.

The furniture and furnishings inside the gallery space are meant to recreate the home ambience or the context where paintings came from. The mood aimed for is a rainy day in Baguio, the soft light perfect for contemplation or contemplation in action (painting).

A spare room of one's own

I temporarily moved out of an old space (the family home in Pasig) into a fairly new one (a friend's pad in the remaining wild meadows of Diliman). This was brought on by a compelling desire for yes, some space of my own while finishing some paintings. That should explain the lack of fluency in the use of words. Visual stuff are begging to be expressed or transferred from sketchpad to canvas. I can't be content just photographing sheer curtains and a still life of basket with bananas.

My friend, a fulltime painter-art professor, lives starkly and simply with a caboodle of four dogs and five cats, all in peaceful coexistence. Beyond having three meals a day, a roof over her head, a stable job, the extra "frills" that are non-negotiable for her are continuing to do art and protecting her space. Space to me is a luxury. I've always lived in shared space with my siblings, especially my sisters, since birth and since I married. Not complaining--my roommates know me enough not to crowd me in further when I'm in a bad way (could be post-menopausal churva or just the testiness of ageing). So a room lent to me free that opens to a forest of bamboo, no screen, no grills, is utter bliss. Did I just die moments ago and was sent by the gods that be to a haven of solitude?

Who's complaining that I have to work from a garden set? Not I. I am having so much fun that I predict by the week's end, my curator will be tapping me on my back and saying, "Good job, Babeth!"

I guess this is my roundabout way of announcing that I am amid preparations for a solo exhibition-cum-installation that celebrates a woman's reclamation of inner and physical spaces. The mixed-media works and recreation of a woman artist's makeshift studio despite daily struggles to balance family life and work are part of "Sampayan Blues" to open Oct. 24 and run for a month at The Sanctuary Gallery of the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary on Campo Sioco Road, Baguio City. Proceeds from the show will all go to the sanctuary's chapel-building project. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Baguio folk pool resources to get ‘Bach vs Beatles’ concert treat

Baguio folk pool resources to get ‘Bach vs Beatles’ concert treat

Steppin out with my babies

"Was it sprinkling or raining? It sounds like a conflict that will never be resolved. The cuteness is unbearable though, that is not up for debate." - a tweet from http://content.lifeisgood.com/

April rains, not just showers, are assuring that May flowers will be around for Baguio residents and visitors alike.

Meanwhile, our resident cuties, The Wee One and her older summering-in-Baguio cousin Machiko Skye (a.k.a. Max), are as close as Siamese twins since Max and her Wowa Pinky came up last week. As hosts, we welcomed the infusion of little people's voices and giggles in our home. During their time together, they did the rounds of Burnham Park's playground, went boating on the artificial Burnham Lake, ran around the garden of Camp John Hay, ate in and ate out (outdoors on the veranda or in small restaurants with their elders Pinky, Granny Suzy and Kimi), played indoors.

Kai and Max at the Maryknoll Ecosanctuary's courtyard Photo by Rolly Fernandez

The crowd (partial view) that turned up to watch the MSO's morning matinee of "Symphonies and Soundtracks" Photo by Anna Leah Sarabia

They even attended a Manila Symphony Orchestra concert at Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary's courtyard just this past Saturday, sitting under a big colorful parachute with the rest of the audience on a sunny Saturday.

When I had a quiet conversation with the two to ask what instruments they saw at the concert, they piped up: "big violins! small violins! big drums! flutes and horns!" They couldn't name the others by their proper names, but that's okay. The sight and sounds of a full symphonic orchestra were enough for their and other little people's music education. Children being children, they also remember how, while they were watching, their hair and heads grew hotter and hotter from the sun.

They and their elders got a thrill when concertmaster and first violinist Gina Medina Perez approached them to say "Hello" upon recognizing the kids' faces at an MSO Academy recital last year. Max got her cheeks pinched.

Today, a Monday, I invited the wee ones plus my niece Bianca for a stroll in the neighborhood and some gross-motor play before Max departs with her elders today. It is their Tita Bianca's 13th birthday tomorrow so she's ending her Baguio summer by returning to her Antipolo fold.So happy birthday, too, Bianx, you were, and still are, an adored one like our wee ones.

Bianca takes a picture of Max, the one with the tiara (which her young cousin pronounces as "tirara") and Kai with the curly tops.

Kai demonstrates to Max how jumps are done in the park's small circle of rocks. I like to call it the village's mini-Stonehenge.

The kids run to look for the next rock from where they can take their next leap.

The cousins with their swing "pusher" and "booster"

I live for the privilege of capturing a facial expression like this one.

The girls meet new faces in the neighborhood, breastfeeding mom Joy and her cutie of a son Leon.

Then it's time to sit by, look at and smell the roses. Kai is unsure if she wants anymore of that healthy morning sun.
Photos of the cousins and Bianca by Booboo Babeth

Baguio and classical music: MSO serenades summer capital

Baguio and classical music: MSO serenades summer capital

Kelly Ramos breaks down walls | Vera Files

Kelly Ramos breaks down walls | Vera Files