Part One: In which I tell you about most of it.

Last weekend, I was a part of a three-day silkscreen workshop conducted by Bongoût (Berlin) and DAGC Gallery (which is located along Pasong Tamo Extension. I posted about their formal opening over here). I was going to be all profound and was planning on waxing poetic about how much of a privilege it was to have been part of the workshop, but I will spare you, whoever you are, and let these pictures speak for themselves.

A couple of things:

One, I did have a lot of fun.

Two, I learned a lot.

Three, sometimes being thrown into something big and meaningful with a bunch of people you don’t know is the best kind of adventure there is. Aside from my brother, I didn’t really know anyone else who was part of the group. I laughed like a lunatic, though. It’s great when you can joke around and work with the same people.

To breeze through the process, here’s what happened:

1.) We drew stuff. We had a bunch of books we could trace from. Sarie calls it cheating.

2. We exposed these drawings to BLINDING LIGHTS so as to make impressions on the silkscreen. The screens have been coated with photo-sensitive emulsion.
(P.S. This is one of our teachers, Christian. He’s been doing this since he was in school.)

3. We print them on with silkscreen ink! We made approximately 30 editions of each sheet.

5. We cut/trim, bind, and sign everything!
(We ended up just having 29 copies… because apparently, we cannot count.)

Anna! The other half of Bongoût.

A list of some of the things I took away from this experience:

• I never want to hold another 9-to-5 again. If I could do these things and just make stuff for the rest of my life, without having to live in a box, I would be very happy.

Which is to say, I really had so much fun. I imagined myself waking up every morning and just thinking about what I could draw or make or put together, and it was just such an attractive option for me. Of course, the dread of Living In a Box loomed over me, but I think I’d rather be happy this way, than sort-of happy with a bank account I don’t even get to use. If that makes sense.

More photos under the cut! Under which, we draw a lot, drink some beer, and act silly. Also, you may notice, I may or may not be really attracted to tattoos. Not people with tattoos, just tattoos, in general. I just love how they look, but that is all I have to say about it. They have a knack of disappointing you, though.

And, since this is pretty image heavy already (and maybe also to prolong the suspense—although, not really, really), I’ll be posting photos of the finished books in another entry, aka part two.

Continue reading Avant-Garde Silkscreen Sweatshop!…

Or, there are way too many awesome shows going on in the Philippines right now, and I can’t possibly go to all of them, but here is a post in which I try to go to as many as I can in a night.

(I am itching to update about the weekend, only because it was super awesome—until the very, very end, and then it kind of went to the nearest, shit-sparsiest part of Shitville. But that is another tale for another day.)

I don’t go to a lot of shows (at least, not as much as I’d like to), but apparently I go to them more than the average person. The usual reason is that people don’t really know when shows open. My family goes to them a lot, and I kind of joke about how these excursions are actually family field trips, because I have a lame sense of humor. But anyway. On the 27th of April, I went to properly see 3 shows, all of which were, on most levels, inspiring.

Geraldine Javier

Painters as Photographers is a group show featuring photographs taken by artists who usually work on paintings, rather than photographs. It was curated by Racehl Rillo, and featured the works of Geraldine Javier, Patty Eustaquio, Yasmin Sison, and Nona Garcia. It was interesting to see how they worked with a medium that they didn’t really use in most of their works. I felt like the whole show wasn’t very cohesive, like they weren’t telling the same story. I love that they moved away from their typical mediums and did work that they weren’t particularly known for, though.

Lara delos Reyes

An Impossible Farewell is the first show of Lara delos Reyes’ that I’ve seen, so I’m not familiar with her work, but I am impressed and moved. I love it when artists use unexpected mediums, and in this case, she rendered many images and text using embroidery done with hair. It’s interesting to see also the contrast of dark imagery with the delicateness of what she used as her base (which look to be vintage embroidered handkerchiefs, correct me if I’m wrong). I get really excited when people play around with new ideas, so this was especially refreshing to me.

Lara delos Reyes (detail)

I’m not sure until when these shows will be on view, but you can drop by Silverlens and SLab at 2320 Pasong Tamo Ext. Warehouse 2, Yupangco Building, between 10am and 7pm (M-F) or 1pm and 6pm (Sat). You can give them a call if you want to make sure they’re open when you plan to go: (632) 816-0044.

Anna Hellsgård and Christian Gfeller from Bongoût, Berlin.

RE:SURGO! is a two-man show by Berlin-based artists Anna Hellsgård and Christian Gfeller. They run Bongoût, which is “an independent artist-run space.” Re:Surgo! is “a silkscreen & design studio, an art publishing company, and a retail store devoted to the diffusion and promotion of innovative creation.”

Re:Surgo! is the inaugural show of the newly-opened DAGC Gallery. The show featured large format prints that are unique (meaning, they’re producing only one of each). I have a couple of favorites, but no money to burn, so I’m just going to stand in the distance and admire them. What I love about them is that they produce a lot of unique books using traditional screenprinting techniques, some of which are on display. They seem to believe in the power (and magic!) of collaborative work between artists, because as much as they create art together, they also have a lot of pieces and collaborations with other artists from all over the world.

Over the last weekend, they also held a three-day workshop for people interested in silkscreen printing, and it was a lot of fun. I’ll be posting about that when I get the time (which I hope is soon). In the meantime, bask in the greatness of these works.

RE:SURGO! is going to be on view until the 4th of June at the Department of Avant-Garde Clichés Gallery, located at 2289 Pasong Tamo Extension, UPRC III Building, Makati City. You can give them a call at (632) 817-2042 for gallery hours.

P.S. Organic beer!

This way to more photos. Continue reading A little bit of artistry….

For the past few months that I’ve been unemployed, I’ve been working on design odd jobs here and there, but I was also in the middle of making this portfolio. I finally had to hustle and finish making it by yesterday afternoon, because I had to send it to a publishing house in San Francisco. It’s been a sort-of secret (I’ve only told a few friends… and a few acquaintances when I run out of Small Talk Topics), but I’m trying to apply for a publishing design fellowship.

I almost actually chickened out and bailed on it, because it was so hard to concentrate on finishing the portfolio. Also, because of the compounding paranoia creeping up on me, as it is wont to do. I’m probably not good enough for this, I would think. Why would they pick me? I think that’s also why it took me so long to finish it on time. If I didn’t finish it, I would have nothing to send, and I wouldn’t have opened up this whole range of possibilities for rejection.

A lot of things helped me through it. Friends coached me on particularly hard days. Other friends cheered me up on particularly hopeless/helpless ones. Other friends’ successes motivated me to pursue my own. A lot of books, snippets, essays and words of wisdom really helped me out, but when my time was running out and I felt like I was losing this fight, I was in the middle of Norton Juster’s “The Phantom Tollbooth.” I end this post with a few quotes from the book:

• “‘You see,’ he went on, ‘it’s very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know it’s there, but you just don’t know where—but just because you can never reach it doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking for.”
• “So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they are impossible.”
• “It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matter.”
• “But you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

I haven’t a lot more to add. I just hope that those excerpts help out someone who’s going through similar situations. I’ve been thinking about this, and right after I dropped the package of at FedEx, my mind went crazy. What if I don’t get it? But then I thought—what if I do? I’m not going to lie and say that I won’t be devastated if I don’t get picked, because I truly will be. This is something that I’ve been wanting for a while… but I feel really good that I did at least try.

And now, I’m going to wait and hope for the best.

I’m not really one to believe in destiny or serendipity or the stars aligning in my favor. On the rare occasion that I do allow myself the thought, it almost always bites me in the ass. However: I mostly enjoy the idea of it. I’d like to think that sometimes, synchronicity does occur, and whether the cause is fate or coincidence, or simply good timing, I don’t really care much for.

Synchronicity (or part of it), this past week, came in the form of some of the books I’ve finished reading, namely: Light Boxes by Shane Jones and Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert. These aren’t reviews; they’re just tiny ruminations on what I’ve been reading and the unexpected weight they bore on recent events.

(I realize I should post this on my book blog, but it seems as though it became more of a burden than a motivation for me to post, so I’m probably shutting it down and relegating all future book posts over here, under a tag. Also, this is kind of long, so it’s mostly for my sake more than for yours. But you are very welcome to read & comment & share your thoughts. I know it’s wordy, but I hope you read it.)

I brought Jones’ novel on my trip because it was short enough to read on the plane. I had always been curious about it, and although it was difficult to get into at first (atypical format, especially since it’s classified as a novel), I quickly drew parallels to my life. It tells the story about a town that has been forced to endure hundreds of days of February. Funnily enough, my February had started out pretty horribly. Reading it, I feel, instigated a sort of Existential Standoff, where I found that I could choose from many different ways of looking at my then decidedly crappy situation. In Light Boxes, February meant a lot of things, but it stood for a bleakness, a desolation and unending sadness that could be fought relentlessly against, but was hard to escape from. Not to give too much away, but Jones, in his last few pages, allowed me to see that there is a way out of February, but that I would have to make my own light boxes, to invent ways to see myself out of the dark. The final pages do not depict a soaring victory, but a resolute finality—a sigh of relief instead of masses of loud cheering.

This tiny book gave me hope that things will definitely get better, that even though the shortest month sometimes feels like the longest, it will come to an end.

It is in reading Gilbert’s collection of poetry, though, that I began to understand what it meant to make peace with loss, and that it was possible. I had been on the look-out for Gilbert’s collections (any, really) for months, and I found two in Kinokuniya. I started with his earlier one—out of respect for chronology than anything else—and found, quite serendipitously, that it brought me to a place where I needed to be.

Line after line came blow after blow. Gilbert was telling me about the temporariness of things, that the state of things is always going to be uncertain and precarious—but also, that it was OK. Not to speak of every poem in the collection, but I came to the understanding that some things were meant to come to an end. This used to terrify me and in some ways, it still does, but Gilbert reminded me that endings also mark new beginnings. And that endings don’t negate the things that came before it. “Thinking love is not refuted because it comes to an end,” he ends “Elegy for Bob (Jean McLean).”

I know it’s not the central, all-encompassing theme of this surprisingly dense (90 pages!) collection, but it really helped me get through a lot of stuff, and let go of a lot of attachments. I have been welcoming the idea of momentary things, and being at peace with the reality that they might go. I know it sounds kind of bad and dismissive and defeatist, but this idea comes from a good place. For example, in “The Lost Hotels of Paris,” he writes: “But it’s the having not the keeping that is the treasure.” There is an awareness of the fleetingness of things, and I think I’m slowly understanding what it means to be OK with that. He puts it brilliantly in “The Manger of Incidentals“:

We are blessed
with powerful love and it goes away. We can mourn.
We live the strangeness of being momentary,
and still we are exalted by being temporary.
The grand Italy of meanwhile. It is the fact of being brief,
being small and slight that is the source of out beauty.
We are a singularity that makes music out of noise
because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness
and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.

And also in “Burma”:

Used, misled, cheated. Our time is always shortening.
What we cherish is always temporary. What we love
is, sooner or later, changed. But for a while we can
visit our other life. Can rejoice in its being there
in its absence. Giving thanks for what we are allowed
to think about it, grateful for it for even as it wanes.
For knowing it is there.

He talks about the endurance of the human spirit, despite everything, and that is comforting to me. (“Until all the world is overcome / by what goes up and up in us, singing and dancing / and throwing down flowers nevertheless.” — A Kind of Courage; “Our spirit persists like a man struggling / through the frozen valley / who suddenly smells flowers / and realizes the snow is melting / out of sight on top of the mountain, / knows that spring has begun.” — Horses at Midnight Without a Moon; “We must admit there will be music despite everything.” — A Brief for the Defense; “But the air stills, the heat comes back / and I think I am all right again.” — A Close Call )

One of my favorite Gilbert poems is “Failing and Flying,” which I read way before I got the book. I was glad that it was part of Refusing Heaven, because I got to “own” it—whatever that means.

“Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.