CXXXIX: Give Art (and Books) on Christmas Day 2018

It was in November 2017 that I found myself in a public indoor space that just happened to have a television tuned to a news channel, and a documentary in interview form was being broadcast.  The documentary’s subject was a very young lady who, as it turns out, was a papercutting artist.  Not having had any prior knowledge of what that was exactly, I continued to watch the program, and the interviewer very skilfully drew out the various aspects of this new-to-me craft from her guest.

In the course of the broadcast, several of the artist’s works were shown, including (or not unlike) these:

I vaguely recall (or now presume) that that was a papercut portrait of the host-interviewer.  Even if it isn’t, I thought that that was quite impressive – how many papercut portraits are out there, or have even been attempted?

This next one may be cheesy to some (including myself), but even I will readily acknowledge the intricateness of the design and its execution.  Even the calligraphy of the word is better than the penmanship of most.

And here is a work self-explanatorily titled “Explore”.

I like the fact that this next one, “True North”, despite its seeming delicateness, can be held up by the artist herself without the piece falling over and appearing distorted.

This final example is my personal favorite, a tastefully-ornamented Mother and Child.  

After watching the documentary, and because at that point late last year we still did not have a Christmas card artwork for the following year, I made a mental note to locate the artist via an online search and find out if it would be possible to commission an appropriate artwork from her.  It was not difficult at all to find her, and after giving her some information via email about our preferences, including showing her our commissioned Christmas artworks of the previous fifteen (!) years, she readily agreed in principle to take on the commission.  She also indicated that she wanted to try out a new “layered papercut” technique, and, even if I had no idea what that was, I said, sure – I’m all for new ways of doing things!

We reconnected some months later, in April 2018, and after agreeing on various technical details (e.g, the size of the artwork), I let the artist get on with it.

With the help of a series of questions from her directed to me, various other back-and-forth correspondence, and emailed updates in the following months, the artwork was finally complete by the beginning of September 2018.  It was quite remarkable – modest in size but because of the multiple layers of papercuts, the innovative LED lighting, and the framing, it looked a bit like an extra-thick notebook computer of some sort.  

She delivered the artwork to me personally, and I then arranged to have it photographed so that it could be printed up as a Christmas card in due course.  She even provided a Certificate of Authenticity – the first time we’ve had one for one of our Christmas artworks.

The artist also very kindly provided her own thoughts about the artwork:

“When I was commissioned to do a Christmas-themed artwork, the first things that came to mind were the usual seasonal activities in the streets: children carollers, pop-up stores, lanterns and bright lights.  However if one zooms out to see the bigger picture, one would realize that Christmas, at least from my point of view and in the Philippine context, is primarily about the birth of our Savior, and is a season greatly cherished together with our nearest and dearest.

“And so I decided to focus on the essence of the Nativity and the Filipino family.  The piece consists of several layers of papercuts, all in white, to focus on the purity and simplicity of the season.  LED lights are added not to overpower the landscape but to better reveal the oneness, meaning, and joy of Christmas.”

How the artwork looks when lit up is quite different versus when unlit.  Here it is unlit, clearly showing the multiple elements and layers that make up the piece.

For the actual Christmas card, however, we naturally chose to photograph it fully lit.

MJ Roxas

TAHANAN

Multi-Layered Papercut with LED Lighting

Image size: 19 cm x 24 cm (7.5” x 9.5”)

With frame: 25 cm x 30 cm (10” x 12”)

2018

And finally, here is more information about the artist herself.

MJ Roxas is full-time Project Manager in IT Services with a passion for art.  When she is not busy on Gantt charts and financials, she devotes her time to reading, writing, or crafting (but always over a cup of coffee).  In 2014, she discovered her obsession with papercutting and has been exploring her unique style ever since.  From portraits to florals, geometric patterns to maps, everything she creates is always a work of art out of love.

As a papercutting artist, she has conducted workshops in Manila, Davao, Hong Kong, and Singapore, including at the University of the Philippines Art Studies Society “Cutting Edge” (2016), the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts and Design and Community of Achievers Association “Arterial Roads” (2016), and the iAcademy Creative Camp (2018).  Her artworks have been exhibited at the Katipunan Art Festival (2015), The Craft Central Art Exchange (2017), and the BGC Arts Center PassionFest (also 2017).  She has also been featured on the ANC Shoptalk television program (2017).

http://www.mjroxas.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mj.roxas/

https://www.facebook.com/papercuttingbyMJ/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjroxas/

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Most of our Christmas card recipients this year, especially those for whom a courier service or the post was the most feasible means of dispatch, received a 2019 desk calendar published by the Ortigas Foundation and Library.  

We have been giving away these calendars for some years now, as they are not only quite useful but also very informative.  We ourselves have a family collection of several hundred antique Filipino postcards (with only few duplicates), and we like the fact that the Ortigas Library picks out a few from their own (obviously more extensive) collection each year for featuring in their desk calendar.

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Certain of our Christmas card recipients who were closer by or could be more conveniently met up with received (instead or in addition) a book box, produced by our regular crafts-lady in Bulacan, Rheeza Hernandez, who is better known for being a puni expert (https://www.flickr.com/photos/rheeza_hernandez/) but has also been doing our custom-made Christmas packages for some years now.  

In around the middle of 2018, I gave Rheeza copies of the books that we intended to include in our Christmas book pack.  Among these were a copy each of two of bestselling author (and my high school classmate) Jessica Zafra’s more recent books, handsomely printed on bookpaper and hardbound even: The Stories So Far (Library of Babel: Manila, 2014)

and Geeks vs. Jocks (also Library of Babel: Manila, 2014).

This year’s book pack also included a copy of highly-acclaimed blogger Jover N. Laurio’s book, Resibo ni Pinoy Ako Blog (Jover N. Laurio: Manila, 2017), 

very aptly reflecting my family’s liberal, progressive, and anti-authoritarian beliefs.

I very rarely go to the cinema to watch movies – I prefer to wait for the DVD (not a Netflix subscriber) and view the film at home, at my own pace, and in my own time, and in peace and quiet.  In fact, it must have been several years since I had been inside a movie theater before December 2017 when within the span of a just three weeks I went off to see Coco (Walt Disney / Pixar, 2017), The Greatest Showman (Twentieth Century Fox, 2017), and, to round up this collective of exceptional music-based films, Ang Larawan (Culturtain Musicat Productions, 2017).

Ang Larawan has a lengthy history, from its origins as a classic play in English by Nick Joaquin, to its translation into Pilipino by Rolando Tinio to become a stage musical, and to its latest incarnation as a highly-acclaimed and multi-awarded film.  Those who have seen the film will find the book Ang Larawan: From Stage to Screen (Anvil Publishing: Manila, 2017) indispensable to completing their appreciation of the work.

And those who have not seen the film but get to read this book will likely be enticed to view it at the next opportunity (whether on DVD or via Netflix, whichever comes first).

Rheeza took these four books and designed a nifty book box to hold them.  Her design was inspired by classic leatherbound volumes such as those issued as The Harvard Classics in the early 20^th century

and incorporated little-concealed shameless plagiarizing of Harvard’s “Veritas” logo.

The resulting packaging 

not only fits all four books very snugly

but should also be able to sit on one’s bookshelf independently (and can then be used to hide emergency funds, jewelry, or even a revolver).

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From me and my family to you and yours, 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!

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Originally published on 31 December 2018. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2018 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

CXXXV: Give Art on Christmas Day 2017

This year, the 15^th year of what is now a tradition of commissioning an original artwork for our family’s Christmas card, was perhaps smoother than usual, facilitated by a personal recommendation by the artist of our 2009 Christmas card. 

Marc Salamat recommended that we seriously consider his previous workshop apprentice, artist-colleague, and Hagonoy, Bulacan townmate, Jojo dela Cruz, for our 2017 Christmas artwork.  This naturally led to a first meeting and discussion, at which time he showed me photographs of works that he had done in the past.

Jojo’s portfolio was impressive in its versatility.  Apart from oil-on-canvas works such as this still life,

or this pensive open window,

he has also made bas-reliefs in a variety of materials and finishes.

And if this was not yet sufficiently varied, Jojo also does three-dimensional resin sculpture to commission, with both secular and religious subjects.

That first meeting was so straightforward that we quickly came to an agreement, even without the need for numerous options or studies.  We simply confirmed our common understanding of what the broad theme needed to be – a Filipino Christmas – and what the specific subject could be – “namamasko.”

By mid-September, or in just a few weeks after that single meeting, Jojo had emailed me a photograph of the artwork in progress in his home workshop.

And by the third week of October, he delivered the finished artwork to my house – only the second time that we had met face-to-face.  Here is how it appeared on the cover of our Christmas card this year.

Jojo dela Cruz

“NAMAMASKO PO”

Oil on canvas

24” x 36” (61 cm x 91 cm)

2017

Born in Binangonan, Rizal in 1980, Jojo dela Cruz was orphaned at a young age and went off to live with relatives in Hagonoy, Bulacan.  He still lives there today, now with his wife and two children.

His interest in art was nurtured as early as secondary school, when his coach Mrs. Yolanda Narciso encouraged him to represent the school in art competitions, winning several awards and plaques of recognition in the process.

In 2005, he won a scholarship from the artist-author-professor Mr. Jun Cruz Reyes, also a Hagonoy native, to enter the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts as a Sculpture major.  He left after two years to become a full-time artist.

Today, Jojo is a highly versatile artist in many media – he sculpts in wood, fiber glass, and clay, and paints on canvas, concrete, and wood.  He even undertakes landscape projects and designs waterfalls for them.  He is also a tattoo artist.

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People lucky (hahaha) enough to be on our gift list will know that over the past few years, we have extended the “give art on Christmas day” effort beyond just our family’s Christmas cards to include even the materials we wrap our gifts in.  This year, our usual Christmas gift package (unfortunately too heavy and fragile to ship via courier to more distant addressees on the list) was encased in a specially-crafted “baul” (chest) mimicking those antique bone-inlaid narra bauls common in Bulacan and elsewhere in centuries past. 

As in previous years, this year’s custom-made packaging was crafted for us by our friendly Bulacan neighborhood artist and heritage worker, Rheeza Hernandez. 

The 2017 Christmas baul held our three book selections for this year:

The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, by Primitivo Mijares, revised and annotated 2016 edition.

Amazing Facts and Figures Every Filipino Must Know, by Luisitio Batongbakal Jr., Alex Castro, and Marcus Vaflor.  Summit Books, 2016.

Heneral Luna: The History Behind the Movie, by Dr. Vivencio R. Jose.  Anvil Publishing, 2015.

These should keep our recipients occupied with reading over the first few weeks of 2018 at least!

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From my family and me to you and yours,

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

MALIGAYANG PASKO AT MANIGONG BAGONG TAON!

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Originally published on 31 December 2017. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2017 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

CXXXIV: Give Art on Christmas Day 2016

Having commissioned an annual Christmas card artwork for several years now, one would think that there might already be a formula or process for getting the next one done and dusted each year. 

In fact, there is: start scouting around for possible artists soon after the New Year, narrow down the choice of artist by Easter Sunday, ask the chosen artist for a few studies representing possible Christmas artwork ideas, choose one of those to pursue by Trinity Sunday, give the artist until September or so to complete the artwork, have the artwork professionally photographed before All Saints’ Day, send off the photographs to the layout artist, then finally have the cards printed and delivered before the first Sunday in Advent.

Whether the actual process complies with the above blueprint is another matter altogether of course.  Thankfully, in most years it does, more or less, or at least the built-in allowances in the schedule allow for the possibility of recovery in case of delays or hitches. 

In some years, one can “cheat” by starting the selection process even before Christmas of the prior year!  Unfortunately, this past year, that had not been the case, as it had already been the end of summer and we still had not identified the right artist for the commission.  (I am happy to note, though, that the usual reason for this is that many of the artists recommended to us are too busy with prior commissions or are preparing frantically for upcoming exhibitions, rendering them unable to complete yet a new commission in time for Christmas.)

Fortunately, a strong recommendation came in before the onset of the monsoon season, and after preliminary introductions, we had agreed to look at some studies, which came in in mid-August.  The first one was provisionally entitled “Three Kings”.

The next one was called “Holy Family”.

The last was “Mother and Child”.

Clearly these were very good starting points, which begged to be rendered in full color.  The artist dutifully acceded, using the “Holy Family” study to show off her preferred color scheme. 

With such a bright and lively palette, the obvious next step was to go on with the production.  However, we chose to go with the “Three Kings” study as the basis of the final artwork.  The artist confirmed the start of the artwork production by sending me this color palette strip.

By October 1^st, the artwork was well-fleshed out,

and by mid-month, the finished artwork had been delivered, with professional photography completed just a couple of days after,

and the printed cards on-hand by late November. 

Here’s the artist’s biographical note:

Born in Marilao, Bulacan in 1988, Catherine “Catcat” Mendoza graduated from the University of the Philippines in Diliman in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, major in Visual Communication, where she also took up ceramic classes.  She is now based in Occidental Mindoro, where she continues to work as an artist in painting and sculpture. 

Catcat’s work is driven by her interest in the spiritual beliefs and traditional practices of indigenous people, with a perceptive understanding of their social and cultural values

and their significance in today’s contemporary society.  Her present work, “Tatlong Mago,” reflects these interests, with the representation of traditional textiles and musical instruments working with a seasonal color palette to depict archetypal Christmas imagery.

As her relationship with art evolves, personal transformations navigated by the

teachings of the ancient people leave an imprint on Catcat’s artworks.  Her hope is that the process serves as a conduit to a healing path, which is what she believes is the heart of her craft.

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In most years, we also have a standard Christmas gift that we distribute to all the individuals on our Christmas list.  In previous years, these had been specially selected (I do not dare pretentiously say “curated”) compact discs (CD’s) and digital video discs (DVD’s).  However, I have noticed that many people, especially the young ones (i.e., everyone younger than me, which is probably three-fourths of the Philippine population), no longer own playback devices for these discs.  Apparently, even if these technologies were groundbreaking twenty or thirty years ago, and are still mainstays in our own home, most people now consider them archaic, the same way I thought vinyl records were (although surprisingly those are now returning, but that’s another story), and just get their audio and video feeds via the internet and on handheld smartphones and equivalent devices.

Since we don’t like to give food for Christmas (there’s already too much of that going around this time of the year!), the thing to do was to identify another kind of standard gift that was not going to be rendered obsolete by rapidly advancing digital technology.  Without reaching too far back into recorded history (scrolls?  parchment?  stone tablets?), the obvious medium was the codex – that’s “book” to us 21^st century homo sapiens sapiens.

We had given books as standard Christmas gifts many times in the past, but it has never been easy to pick one that was not only not ubiquitous and pedestrian enough that it would not already be on the bookshelf of the recipient, but also so well-written to be our recommended read, AND sufficiently representative of what my family and I believe in and subscribe to.  Amazingly, there were a few such books that had come out in the past year, but we had focused on the outstanding new book from Raissa Robles, Marcos Martial Law: Never Again.

We were lucky enough to place a sufficiently large order with the publisher for a few hundred copies of the book last summer, at a bargain price and before it came out in bookstores, where it promptly sold out. 

I don’t usually do book reviews, and this article is about giving art for Christmas, so instead of a review, let me talk about what we next did with the book.  In the past two years, our standard gifts (a DVD, then a book) were artfully packaged for us by our townmate, craftsperson and heritage advocate Rheeza Hernandez.  This year, we had asked her to take the Marcos Martial Law book and recommend appropriate packaging for it.  She promptly showed me three studies by mid-September.  The first one was “Hand”.

The second one was “Hand and Head”.

And the last one was “Splat”.

All of the options went for red-spray-painted-stencilled jute sacks, barbed-wire rendered in silver-painted rope, and a tricolor “puni” dove.

We chose to go with “Hand and Head”.  And in case the packaging was too “bloody”-looking and perhaps too morbid for Christmas, Rheeza and I agreed to change the ribbon from red to green.

By mid-November, most of the few hundred copies of the book had been packaged by Rheeza, ready for dispatch or hand delivery.

So if you were on our gift list for this book, consider yourself doubly fortunate for having received an originally crafted artwork (in the form of special book packaging) from the Rheeza Hernandez Workshop in Malolos, Bulacan.

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And triply fortunate because you would also have received Catcat Mendoza’s original artwork “Tatlong Mago” in the form of our 2016 Christmas card.

From my family and me to you and yours,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!

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Originally published on 31 December 2016. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2016 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.