CXII. Give Art on Christmas Day 2010

It’s already the first Sunday of the year, therefore almost all the usual recipients, and then some, about five hundred all told, of our family’s custom-made Christmas card, now on its eighth consecutive year, should have received it by now.

This year, we decided to do something different again.  For starters, we eschewed the usual oil-on-canvas medium, and went for something that we have a family fetish for, Philippine hardwood.  Another radical change was that the artwork is upright rather than crosswise, or, in the current computerese jargon, in “portrait” format and not in “landscape,” unlike all seven of our previous Christmas card artworks.

Nonetheless, like most of the previous ones, this year’s artist is from Bulacan, and is still youthful – “still” being the key qualifier, as he and I were born in the same year, and even attended primary school together for seven years.  Here is how he looked like at about six years old, in our Kindergarten Yearbook,

And then seven years later, upon our Grade School graduation.

The biographical note at the back of the Christmas card reads

Born in 1965, Michael Alexander C. Ocampo spent his childhood and adolescent years in Malolos, Bulacan. After being educated by nuns (the Immaculata Academy of Malolos), priests (the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary), and friars (the University of Santo Tomas), Chester spent some years in media and advertising before teaching arts and crafts at the Manila Waldorf School. He is a sculptor of both wood and clay works and also does water color paintings.

When I got in touch with him about a year ago for the first time after more than three decades, “Chester,” as he was now known (we had simply called him “Michael” when we were still in short pants), had told me that he had been pursuing “wood-burnings” for about the past two years.  At first, I thought that he had gone down the route of starving destitute artist and had simply gotten into making charcoal for selling to his neighbors as fuel.

I later learned that this, perhaps more accurately termed “burn-etching on wood panel,” was a new art form that I had not heard of before, and that he had effectively become one of its more active exponents.  Here is a more current incarnation of the previously-pictured schoolboy, showing off a couple of his works in this medium.

Here are two of his other, non-wood-burned, art pieces in sculpted wood, mounted on the wall of his home.

And here is his reaction after I told him that those last two looked like pieces of preserved turd.

A short while later, while I was convalescing in hospital after surgery, he visited me and gifted me with this.

And a couple of months later, he sent me this study for our contemplated Christmas card.

At the same time, he was busy preparing for a one-man show that ran later in the year.

This featured a couple of dozen more of his very curious wood-burnings, most of which sold on opening night. Among the few that have not sold, I found the following pieces most interesting.

“Two to Tango” (16” x 11.5”)

“Three Trees” (30.75” x 11.75”)

“Network” (11.5” x 30.75”)

“Island Dwellers” (32” x 9.5”)

And here is the artist again, personally peddling another one of my favorites from the show, "Dancing Calachuchi" (26.75" x 9.5"). (He may be contacted directly at checoco22@yahoo.com)

However, in our view we have the best piece of all – our Christmas card artwork, on a solid piece of beautiful narra hardwood, and the largest too, at 24” x 18”.  (As in years past, this scan of the Christmas card does not do justice to the actual artwork's intricate etchings on the beautifully woodgrained narra panel's vivid shades of yellow and hues of brown.)

In Chester’s own words,

“Masaganang Paskó” (“A Bountiful Christmas”) shows richly-flowing palay (harvested rice) seeds and buntings around crisscrossing rice stalks that morph into that most Filipino of Christmas symbols, the paról (traditional Christmas lantern). Begun in summer when the country was still in the midst of a severe dry spell, the artwork was completed in time for a bountiful Christmas 2010.

And from my family and me via Chester Ocampo the Artist to you and yours:

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

Maligayang Paskó at Manigong Bagong Taón!

From the Veron-Dulay-Cloma Family of the Philippines

Originally published on 2 January 2011.  Copyright ©2011 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

Original comments:

guillermodionisio wrote on Jan 4, '11 Thank you for sharing these masterpieces, Mr. Cloma. I am now a fan of Mr. Ocampo. I think his exhibit ran after the one interpreted by Dr. Leo Garcia using phenomenology and certain canons of aesthetics (he's a philosopher teaching in the Ateneo and UST). I have seen this form of art several years ago and even tried doing it for fun in one of my classrooms in ICSB (old Immaculata building) back when I was in high school. I'd like to take this opportunity also to be sure if you were the one I saw in the 9 am Sunday Mass of Barasoain Church last 2 January. You were carrying a back pack then (?). Of course my only basis is your small photo in this blog because we've never been introduced to each other in person.

docsalgado wrote on Jan 6, '11 interesting piece of art>