Today January 5th being the Feast of the Epiphany and the first day of the last week of the 2024 Christmas season (which ends with the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism on January 12th) seems as good a day as any to report back on our Christmas art endeavor for this year.
The search for 2024’s Christmas artwork was eased somewhat with an unrelated commission the year before. In October 2023, I took delivery of an unusual mixed media composition depicting Malolos’ historic Casa Tribunal, which I had written about here a couple of times before:
https://akyat-bahay-gangster.blogspot.com/2012/01/xxvi-rare-opportunity-unique.html
https://akyat-bahay-gangster.blogspot.com/2016/04/cii-save-malolos-casa-tribunal.html
I came across a young Bulacan artist whom I thought created pretty detailed and accurate depictions of heritage structures, and I thought that the Casa Tribunal would be an excellent subject for this artist.
Right after last New Year’s Day, in early January 2024, I thought, why not ask this same artist to create our next Christmas artwork? And so was hatched the idea of depicting, not another heritage structure, but a much newer building, still in Malolos – the chapel in our own neighborhood in Barangay Guinhawa.
Not surprisingly, the process of composing this piece was intricate and time-consuming, but by October, it was essentially complete.
It also became obvious how we managed to somehow re-imagine the Chapel as a Christmas setting.
The only details that remained to be addressed related to the placement of strings of lights on the façade,
and what color they should be,
both of which questions were resolved in the final artwork.
Another problem was the inability to find a suitable hovering Angel for the Nativity tableau – something like this:
Eventually, the artist decided that a Star of Bethlehem in the form of a Christmas lantern would be an acceptable substitute.
By All Souls’ Day, the piece was complete.
At around that same time, we had settled on the other components of our gift bag for the year, beginning with “Gabay sa Wastong Pamamahala ng Pera”, the Pilipino edition of the “Handbook on Personal Finance” written by the late Dean Ma. Elenita B. Cabrera of the Lyceum of the Philippines University and published by the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines in 2021.
A follow-up to last year’s favorite is also inside this year’s gift bag, the observant and irreverent (but with a lot of heart) Kapitan Tambay Book 2.
After so many years, the annual gift bag would no longer be complete without the mainstay desk calendar from the Ortigas Foundation, this year featuring engravings from the “El Oriente” Manila weekly beginning 1875.
The only thing left to do was encase everything in a katsa bag, which worked quite well last year, therefore we’ll do the same this year but affix the logo of another of our Malolos house-museums to it instead.
At this point, we formally introduce this year’s Christmas artist.
Born in 1985, Angelo Hernandez Agustin is a self-taught artist from Plaridel, Bulacan. After graduating from the Centro Escolar University in Malolos in 2006 with a degree in Business Administration, he joined the family’s food manufacturing business; in 2018, he took overall responsibility for its operations. It was shortly after then that he started dabbling in art production in his spare time, having been encouraged by his family, colleagues, and friends to pursue it alongside the management of the business. He sold his first artwork in 2022.
His refined and delicate artworks require comprehensive attention to detail as well as a lengthy creation process, and are characterized by the combination of diverse media and materials. As an admirer of art and history, he specializes in mixed media miniature sculptures of heritage structures. Through his works, he aims to bridge the gap between the eras of old and modern architecture to give today’s generation a glimpse of the rich culture of the Philippines.
His latest artwork, “Paskong Ma-Guinhawa”, while featuring a relatively younger structure than his usual subjects, the (just-a-decade-old) Chapel of Our Lady of Remedies in Barangay Guinhawa, Malolos, Bulacan, perfectly demonstrates the ability of Angelo’s art to blend tradition and modernity while depicting that most evocative of Filipino seasons – Christmas.
On Facebook: Angelo Hernandez Agustin ARTS
Via Email: agustin_18_061@yahoo.com
Angelo H. Agustin
PASKONG MA-GUINHAWA
Mixed Media
24” x 36” / 61 cm x 91 cm
2024
And so from my family and me,
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!
Originally published on 5 January 2025. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2025 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
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