KASINING ESSAYS by Arnaldo de Tondo

  A MAN ADEPT WITH CHISEL AND BRUSH by Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  MOYO MONTES is a native of Paete, Laguna. He grew up there in the midst of craftsmen who earn their living by producing and selling woodcarved images of farmers, fishermen, vendors, and saints. Paeteños, like the Igorots of the Cordilleras, and the Kapampangans of Betis, Pampanga are renowned for their woodcarving skills. Paeteños though stand out distinct and original  because of the "taka", a handicraft item also being produced and sold in their town. Takas are those red-colored papier-mache figures of horses which I saw being sold years ago at the Tondo town plaza during fiestas. Moyo's parents, Benjamin and Belen,  operate a woodcraft shop and store, where he learned the rudiments of woodcarving. But Moyo went beyond that, being innately artistic. He taught himself drawing and maybe even painting. Inspired perhaps by those illustrious artist sons of Paete, Manny Baldemor and his cousin Fred (Moyo's b...

  Essay 66. ALL ABOUT BERT  We have in college, at the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts, an art group which we named SETA (Self-expression Through Art). Our group held its first exhibit at the Galeria delas Islas in 1985. We revived that art group in 2011, this time as SETA Pilipinas, when we held in August of that year another group exhibit at Sigwada Art Gallery. To hype up that show which I titled "Renascence", I wrote a series of essays about the participating artists. The two essays below were my write-ups on Bert Falsis  1. NOBLE, BRIGHT AND FAMOUS Bert Falsis' full first name is Elberto - a variation I guess of Albert, which means noble, bright and famous. Bert initially used Bert Falsis as his Facebook profile name, but decided to change it to Treb Falsis because a cousin who's also in the same line of business (printing)  insisted on also using Bert Falsis as his profile name. As his name implies, our Bert is very bright indeed. He and wi...

Below is the exhibition notes I wrote for the second Papelismo Group art exhibit at Galerie Anna in 2014) Essay 65. P A P E L M I S M O Benjie Torrado Cabrera, Renato Habulan, Alfredo Liongoren, Arnel Mirasol, and Pinggot Zulueta will unveil at the Galerie Anna, PAPELMISMO,  the sequel to their critically-acclaimed 2012 show, PAPELISMO. Joining the five this time are Thomas Daquioag, Neil Doloricon, Alfredo Esquillo, Egai Talusan Fernandez, Emmanuel Garibay, Pablo Baen Santos, and Allison Wong-David. Except for one or two, this roster of exhibit participants include names who belong to that group of brave souls who dare bucked the political and cultural establishment during the Marcos regime and went on to make bigger names for themselves in the Philippine art scene. Collectively referred to as the Social Realists, they are firm advocates of the art of commitment and social change. This is the second in a series of shows mapped out by Renato Habulan for this group of artists intent...

  Essay 64. FROM AUTODIDACT TO MASTER PAINTER By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  AMBROCIO MALLARI is an autodidact or self-taught painter. He is that in the sense that he never studied in a fine arts school. What Mallari knows about painting he learned when he worked as an apprentice in a shop in Manila that produced movie billboards or cartelons. His uncle Perfecto Mercado brought him there when he was still in his teens. That job was a huge opportunity for a boy who used to practice drawing by bringing pencil and paper whenever he drove their carabao to the pasture to graze. Knowing that the opportunity to study in college was beyond their means, Mallari took advantage of his time in the shop to absorb the secrets of the craft. In 1975, Mallari began painting easel-sized works on canvas. It didn't take long for him to master oil painting and he was able in time to sell his paintings in galleries in Pampanga and Manila and later on, even in Hawaii. Mallari was born in Concepcion, Ta...

  Essay 63. TRUE-BLUE SON OF ANGONO By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  The scenic Laguna de Bay is fringed almost all around by the lakeshore towns of Laguna and Rizal. Most prominent among those towns is Angono, the birthplace of the late great National Artist Carlos "Botong" Francisco. Acknowledged by many as the art capital of the Philippines, Angono boasts not only of having Botong Francisco as its native son, but also Lucio San Pedro, a National Artist for Music. Angono is also JOVITO ANDRES's native town. He was born there on December 14, 1966. His father was a farmer and fisherman. His interest in art was aroused even before grade school by the illustrations in the comics given them by his aunt (who was a comics distributor) which he religiously copied. The annual exhibits at the town plaza of famous painters like Jose Blanco, Nemiranda, Salvador Juban, Lito Balagtas, and Weng Unidad further boosted Andres's ambition to become a painter. The success of those painters ...

  Essay 62. CELEBRATING CELEBRATIONS By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."  With that quote, Picasso elevated naif, primitivist, and even "childlike" art, onto a status equal to that enjoyed by Cubism, Fauvism, and other modernist art styles. Pablo Picasso, the pioneer art deconstructivist, was already a master of academic realism when he was in his mid-teens. But at some point in his career, Picasso grew tired of imitating natural appearances and began distorting and deconstructing forms and figures so that his works began to resemble more and more paintings that can easily be done by a child. That's all for the good it seems, because Picasso's radical creative moves liberated painters from the tedious task of copying nature as is, and expanded the definition of artworks that are considered aesthetically pleasing and professionally-done. AMADOR BARQUILLA's paintings - with the ex...