CXXXI. Give Art on Christmas Day 2013

On this, the eleventh consecutive year of our family’s annual Christmas artwork commissioning, we didn’t have to look far for a suitable artist. 

Actually, that is only partly true, as we had at the outset made inquiries of a fair number of young artists in Manila, Bulacan, and even beyond as early as the start of the year, but they were all otherwise engaged in other projects, commissions, and upcoming one-man (or -woman) shows.  By September, or way beyond our usual internal mid-year deadline, we still had no Christmas artwork forthcoming.

And then, I realized that the answer was right under our noses, as it were.  For the eventual artist was someone whom I had known personally for many years, as his father was our chief electrician for our processional carrozas in Malolos each Holy Week, and he himself had been helping his father out in this yearly undertaking since he was a schoolboy.   The following biographical note provides a fuller backgrounder:

Born in 1991, Mark Christian P. Magno is a native of Paombong, Bulacan.  Christian is a self-taught artist who has been winning school and inter-school art competitions since childhood. 

Apart from the visual arts, his other passion is the culinary arts – he is a trained cook and worked as one after graduation from high school.  Consistent with this, Christian is currently a BS in Hotel and Restaurant Management freshman at the La Consolacion University Philippines in Malolos, Bulacan.  While balancing his artistic and culinary interests with his academic workload, he manages to be an all-around athlete and is also on the university’s varsity basketball team.  On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ychan.eunra

What the biographical note does not get into is that originally, his father had thought, or suggested, that the son might pursue a Fine Arts degree in college, as he knew that he was at least skilled in art production and could certainly develop such talents further with proper advanced studies.  The father had told me about this earlier in the year, which I fortunately recalled after all the other erstwhile artist candidates had proven unavailable or unsuitable.

A quick conversation with Christian one Saturday to broach the subject proved most fruitful, with him quite enthused about the opportunity.  As a start, I asked him to sketch his proposed study for the prospective Christmas artwork, and here is what he showed me a week later:

Obviously, Christian had a million Christmas-related ideas, and tried to accommodate all of them into this one sketch!  After a brief “master class” courtesy of our 2010 Christmas card artist, Chester Ocampo, Christian was inspired to reconsider and more tightly focus his response to our request for a simple representation of a quintessential Filipino Christmas.  The result was this depiction of a small family saying grace before sharing the traditional Christmas midnight feast. 

  

The artist’s pride in his new creation, even only in pencil sketch form, was evident.

Actually completing the artwork took several more weeks, as Christian himself admitted that he had never used acrylic, much less oil, and had never painted on canvas – his prolific output since early youth was exclusively with poster paint and other school art materials, and usually only on illustration board or some other paper surface. 

But persist he did, and the resulting finished artwork, in all its glorious color, was completed by November 10^th, and sent off to the printer the following day.  As in years past, this digital image does not do full justice to the exuberance of the actual artwork, but it will do.

Christian Magno

NOCHE BUENA

Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”

2013

Therefore from Christian the artist and from my family and me, here’s to a

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Maligayang Paskó at Manigong Bagong Taón!

And all our prayers and best wishes for an excellent 2014 and beyond.

Originally published on 31 December 2013. All text and photos except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2013 by Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

CXXX. Give Art on Christmas Day 2012

A uniquely Filipino visual art form from the 19^th century is Letras y Figuras, where persons’ names are spelled out with individual letters that are each in turn formed by smaller figures – humans, animals, plants, and vignettes of Spanish colonial life.  Its leading proponent was Jose Honorato Lozano (1815-1885), who produced a few extant examples for private patrons, including FRANCISCO DE YRIARTE

and EULALIA N. de ROCA.

In the late 20^th to early 21^st centuries, the art form underwent a renaissance and gained new adherents, the foremost of whom is probably Alvaro Jimenez (born 1948) of San Fernando, Pampanga (see http://www.paintingsphilippines.com/).  He has produced to several commissions, including MABUHAY

and MARAMING SALAMAT.

We thought that it would be a good thing to also contribute to this mini-renaissance, so for our 2012 Christmas card, we therefore decided to commission a Letras y Figuras as well.  And as with most of our previous Christmas card artworks, we wanted to engage a young artist to create it. 

Despite our initial apprehensions, finding a young person who already understood the Letras y Figuras idiom came rather easily and fortuitously, as I found out that the daughter of a colleague had done several examples of this art form.  Her biographical note might explain why:

Ysabela Maria Parungao is a third year Visual Communications major at the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines in Diliman.  Iya was also recently granted a scholarship under a South Korea – UP Diliman exchange program and commenced a one-year residency at Kyungpook National University in Daegu in August 2012.

 

Iya finished high school at Assumption Antipolo and was the Sangguniang Kabataan Chairperson in Barangay Concepcion Dos, Marikina City, from 2007 to 2011.  She is also a member of AdCore, a not-for-profit student-run advertising agency, and the Delta Lambda Sorority, both in UP Diliman.

Iya has exhibited her artworks since she was in high school.  She has a natural love for history and the arts and would like to use her talents to pursue a career in advertising in the future.

This was therefore a pretty straightforward task for her – do a “MALIGAYANG PASKO” in Letras y Figuras style.  She didn’t even need to do sketches or studies, I guessed.

Well, I thought it was straightforward, but then Iya tells me that all those letters just cannot fit in a six-inch-wide frame and still be intelligible as “figuras”.  Even on two rows, which is consistent with the 19^th-century examples, the word “MALIGAYANG” would be awfully cramped.  She therefore sought permission to deviate slightly from the idiom, with just the “PASKO” in strict “figuras” and the “MALIGAYANG” rendered as parols (traditional Filipino Christmas lanterns).  Here’s how Iya’s first pen sketches looked like:

Here is the fully-figured artwork before coloring.

And here’s how the 5-inch-tall by 8-inch-wide artwork came out, fresh from Iya’s watercolor brush and ink pen:

I thought that the “parol” solution was extremely appropriate and therefore ingenious.  And the use of a pale blue background rather than the usual yellows or off-whites made the artwork firmly modern and original, while still contributing appreciably to more than 150 years of the Filipino Letras y Figuras canon.  

And here is how the final Christmas card came out a few weeks ago:

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 2013. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2012 by Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.