Things I have learned about myself, the world, and life in general, courtesy of a trip to a foreign place within the same timezone.

I got back from a trip to Hong Kong yesterday afternoon. I have never traveled by air alone before (my friends had a later flight, so I flew out by myself), and this was my first trip out of the country without my family. There was an odd mix of feelings, but I suppressed them from surfacing by thinking of other things, since I couldn’t afford to panic while I’m in the middle of the airport. I haven’t actually been the luckiest when it comes to airports, but that’s another story.

Anyway, here’s a list! Of random things I have learned, taken from smaller incidents and translated to suit “the bigger picture.” The trip was mildly eventful. Nothing really happened that would be life-altering (at least, not from my current viewpoint), but it happened at the most opportune time in my life, I think. I needed a break, and I needed to think (and be away from the Internet). So, this happened.

Continue reading Life Lessons: Told In Seven Acts….

Going on a trip planned last February (I know!). I’ll be back soon enough. There was supposed to be an accompanying mix, but it deteriorated into Sad Song Festival headlined by Ryan Adams and Elliott Smith. It was better that I didn’t share it lest I infected you all.

I’m excited (but also terrified, annoyed, et cetera, et cetera).

Don’t know how many of you are art collectors, but just posting a caveat.

A gallery in Manila selling this piece, claiming it’s a Malang. It’s a fake and is going for Php 1.2M. It’s not even an impressively rendered copy! It’s so obviously and blatantly fake, that it doesn’t even give any room for artistic discourse as to whether or not it’s an original piece. I know that it’s a fake because I’ve seen and been around a lot of original Malangs, and this is so off the mark. I’m not going to state the reasons why, because that will probably lead to better copies, but trust me, this one is a fake.

The photo was taken by someone I know, and we thought it would be wiser to not post the gallery’s name. The intention of this post isn’t to drag the name of the gallery across the mud, but to warn potential buyers that they might be scammed. It’s also a reminder for collectors to know your art.

It’s tedious and tiring, but at least you won’t be scammed out of a million clams and left with a fake.

Big Air

I find it hard to talk extensively about things that move me, in a way that doesn’t seem too contrived or too emotional. Sometimes, trying to put words into experiences and matching them up to how you feel doesn’t quite deliver the same message, and very often, the impact is softened.

The reason why the draft of this blog post has been sitting in my WordPress dashboard for the past few days is because I can’t quite find the right words to talk about how much I love Alvin Villaruel’s Boy Scout Farm. Villaruel says that it’s largely influenced by his experience of growing up in the province, and he handles the imagery really, really well. I don’t have a province—I grew up in the city—and just because I wore a uniform, doesn’t make me a girl scout, so to me there’s very little connection and resonance to take from this show, considering. And yet, I really felt drawn to these pieces.

Sometimes, when you can’t really connect by way of similar experiences, people tend to use a different way of conveying meaningful stories, ideas, moods, and feelings. I felt like these were delivered to me, as a viewer, by way of his artistry—the colors he used, the way he rendered his subject matter, the images he collected to tell his story about growing up in a place removed from the current millieu of both himself and the viewer. The subjects of his pieces seem a lot more Americana than probinsyano, but they were all chosen to bring the viewer to their own memories of childhood.

Personally, three pieces stood out, but I think it has more to do with how striking the images are to me, than any other basis. I just really love how these pieces were handled (the three outside of the cut), and I am in love with the colors that he used for them. Perhaps they have also triggered some reminders from my youth, but I’m coming up with no specific memories associated with these images. They are just really, really beautiful to me. I think, sometimes, this kind of beauty in art just might be enough to move people, even if, to some people, they might not mean much else.

Study of Aerodynamics

Boy Scout Farm

Continue reading Alvin Villaruel’s “Boy Scout Farm”…

I like making collages. I don’t know why, but I just like putting stuff together—photographs, patterns, words, feelings—to make it something new. Also, I find the aesthetic really pretty and interesting to look at. I haven’t been making a lot of these in a while. I might have gotten burnt out when I finished making Baraja, which is a series of small collages I made on a deck of cards, way back in 2006. I began another series, 52 Songs but production has stopped at Song Number 13. I also have other series that are works in progress, including a tribute to The National’s Boxer, which I started two years ago. It is 1/6 done.

I missed it a lot, though… and even though I don’t think I’ve gotten into the swing of things again, it felt really nice to be cutting stuff up and gluing them down. I even tried something different today! My dad had wooden blocks from a piece he made for a group show, so I took a few, and made these:

I don’t know what these are for yet. The only things I can think of using them for are paperweights and bookends for really light books. But my dad saw them and asked if I wanted to collab, so I don’t know. Maybe there is a future for this. I have a huge frakking pile of wooden blocks in my room, and I’m claiming it now: they stand for Future Possibilities. Or, at least, future block-collages, whatever these are.

In any case, they were really fun to make. Calming, even.

The title of R.M. de Leon’s show, Daily Practice: No Method, lends much more to the understanding of his show than one would think. Looking at the pieces, I knew enough to know that these pieces told stories and narratives, albeit ones that I could not piece together. There is such an elemental quality to it, story-wise: you see the characters, the settings, but my brain could not make the jump to connect these things together to form the plot.

Reading the exhibit’s write-up kind of affirmed that personal observation (he was working with narrative), but also de Leon wanted to involve himself in a free-er process, where the addition of elements was not planned, but spontaneous. I suppose that’s where the title comes in: de Leon created a show with ‘no method,’ choosing instead to let the art go where it wants to go. There is a certain action and dynamism that is in his works, and maybe it’s a result of the combination of his more figurative style with a bit of abstract experimentation, but you can see, in the action and excitement, that they want to take you somewhere.

Continue reading R.M. de Leon’s ‘Daily Practice: No Method’…