In keeping with the growth mindset (a business buzzword that I belatedly and mysteriously only picked up some time in the last five years, it seems), I decided to learn the lessons of 2022, when too many hitches nearly derailed our Christmas undertaking. I started out early enough, I thought, by focusing on some packaging options, following the mid-2022 demise of our craftsperson of over a decade, Rheeza Hernandez (R.I.P.). More on this packaging activity later.
The longer critical path, as previous years’ experience had demonstrated, was the identification of the Christmas card cover artwork. For this, I was prompted to recall another artwork that we had recently acquired, just last December of 2022.
It was a depiction of the Cenacle, or the room of the Last Supper, before Christ and the Apostles arrive. At four feet tall by eleven feet wide, and obviously inspired by the famous Leonardo da Vinci fresco for a Milanese monastery, I thought that it was quite interesting and innovative. The artist Marc Salamat (who had done a previous Christmas artwork for us and several other works since) was the one who told me about this, saying that the artist, a friend and workshop assistant of his, created this upon a prospective client’s commission, when upon its completion, the supposed client could no longer be located. Without having received a downpayment, the artist was anxious to recover his considerable costs, and I was therefore able to acquire this curious piece at a reasonable price.
In May 2023, I contacted the artist of the Cenacle again, and asked him if he could propose a Filipino Christmas-themed artwork for us. He eagerly responded, asking only that he be given some time to first complete some in-progress artworks for an upcoming art exhibition. Soon after, by the following month, he sent me three colorful studies,
a domestic scene with family members setting up Christmas lanterns,
a grandfather offering his Christmas gift,
and a happy gang of kids reveling among presents.
I told the artist that we seemed to prefer the third idea most. He then got to work, and by October, the finished artwork was ready for sending to the printer.
In the meantime, we had time to finalize the contents of our gift pack. An easy pick this year was a new volume from Dr. Crispin Maslog, the author of “Never Again! [to Martial Law!]”, that we had included in our 2021 gift pack. For 2023, Doc Cris has for us “Remember People Power 1986”.
A new author-artist whom I had come across earlier this year was the source of our next pick. I had met Allan Leycano a.k.a. Kapitan Tambay at the Manila International Book Fair in September, and an anthology-compilation of his cartoons from the 2020 to 2022 period “Kapitan Tambay Book 1”, already nearly sold out during the Book Fair but ready for reprinting (“Remastered”), was another worthy inclusion in the gift pack.
Probably the easiest pick was the always-popular Ortigas Foundation desk calendar, which for 2024 features archival photographs and postcards from the Cordillera People of the early 1900’s.
As to how to package all these items together, we hit on the idea, perhaps rather obvious and even lazy, of a “katsa” cloth bag,
customized with the logo of one of our private museums, the Museum of the Incarnation.
In what might have been an omen of more hitches, the manufacturer, who already warned me well before that the earliest that they could deliver the finished katsa bags was Thursday December 7th, which I already thought was cutting it too closely, apologetically informed me that they had mistakenly printed the logo on only one side of the bag instead of the agreed two sides. They could still print it on the other side, but with just the gray text and not the colored portion, and with a further delay. I agreed, and thankfully all the reprinted bags were still delivered by Sunday December 10th.
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We now formally introduce our Christmas artist.
Mar Perez
A TIME FOR GIVING
Oil on canvas
40” x 30” / 102 cm x 76 cm
2023
Born in 1985, Mar Perez is a native of Hagonoy, Bulacan. After attending elementary school in Guinayangan, Quezon, where his father was based, and high school in Hagonoy, he first tended fishponds and worked as a cook in restaurants before becoming the workshop apprentice of his townmate, the artist Marc Salamat, in 2017. That enabled him to learn and put into practice the technical aspects of art production, which paved the way for him to eventually become an artist in his own right. Mar is now best known for his colorful artworks that creatively upcycle discarded rubber materials from the production of footwear.
Instagram: marperez1541
Facebook: mar.perez.355138
TikTok: marperez1541
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And finally, to the printing of the Christmas cards. While the artwork file was sent to the press in October, soon after the artwork was completed by the artist, and the actual cards finished their printing in November, the procurement of the matching envelopes still had to be undertaken. “Matching” is the operative word here, because while the press agreed that the cards could be in A5 size, they presumably forgot that those would require C5-sized envelopes, which they belatedly realized were not easy to find in Manila.
After weeks of frantic searching, apparently all they could find were “catalogue”-sized envelopes, which matches half-US Letter-sized cards, but are a very tight fit at best for A5-sized cards, as this year’s Christmas card recipients will have discovered. The delay that resulted from the printer’s previous futile C5-sized-envelopes search eliminated the benefit of the early printing of the cards themselves, and in the end, the cards with the ill-fitting envelopes were delivered only on Friday December 8th, leaving barely a week to write out several hundred addressees’ names on both cards and envelopes before they needed to be distributed in the final week before Christmas Day.
I guess we’ll have to just pray harder to Saint Rheeza in future years.
But as always happens anyway during Christmas, things adjust and work themselves out, or rather we hard-working humans do, and card-and-gift pack delivery schedules were still substantially complied with.
And so from Mar and all the other sources of this year’s (almost-but-not-delayed) Christmas art and literature showcase, and my family and me,
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!
Originally published on 2 January 2024. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2024 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
