Brothers in Art

Essay 45. BROTHERS IN ART

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol 

Collaboration among artists is nothing new. That is a must when the art being created is a large-scale work, like a humongous mural for example. Monumental sculptures also require a number of people to complete it. But not all collective efforts in art making are genuine collaboration. Many are just master-apprentice relationships, where the whole credit for the finished work goes to the master, while the apprentices or assistants remain unknown.

Painter Philipp Badon and sculptor Daniel Carpio are now collaborating on a sculpture project. Even though Badon is obviously the master here because of his decades-long experience in art making and notable standing in the Philippine art scene, Carpio is truly his collaborator despite his young age as he is given equal prominence. And rightly so, because the art they are making are woodcarvings, sculptures. Badon contributed the concepts and designs, and did the finishing touches.

Painted woodcarvings, again, are nothing new. The renown painter and sculptor Manny Baldemor once exhibited a series of painted woodcarvings he called "paintures", if I remember the term he used correctly. He called it thus because he considered those works as paintings and sculptures rolled into one. But Baldemor's paintures are reliefs or wall sculptures while Badon's and Carpio's are in the round or freestanding. 

Badon's contribution to the project is very much visible in the forms the sculptures took, especially the torso sculpture of a fellow with blue spiky hair which reminds me of the paintings Badon used to do years ago when he was still entranced by Picasso. The other sculptures, although no longer akin to Picasso's style, are still definitely Badon's. These sculptures are apparent paeans to working class people - like farmers, fishermen, and vendors - because they were painted gold to symbolize their significance and worth.

PHILIPP BADON studied at the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts, where he honed his skill in drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. He had explored and tried various styles, like Surrealism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism. A professional artist for forty years now, Badon had exhibited widely both here and abroad. He has had more than 30 solo shows and had joined more than a hundred group exhibitions. Among the styles that Badon adopted, it is abstract expressionism that gives him the greatest delight because of the spontaneity and freedom inherent in the creation of paintings in that style - especially in his choice of colors. Badon is not averse to using colors at their full intensity, because he considers bright colors to be both therapeutic and uplifting. 

DANIEL M. CARPIO was born on May 6, 1984 in    Betis, Guagua, Pampanga - a town famous for its woodcarving industry. Carpio began  learning the craft when he was twelve years old by watching his father at work. Highly skilled at fifteen, he was already working at that young age in different woodcarving shops in their town. When Carpio started raising a family, he came up with the idea of doing woodcarvings on his own which he posted on social media. A good move, because that was how he got noticed and began attracting clients and collectors. One of those is his project partner Badon, who selflessly shares the limelight with him, and who regard him as his peer: a brother and comrade in their common struggle to make a living and a name for themselves through their art.