HEY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES, FELLOW ARTISTS:

QUARENTA ART EXHIBIT
1968 - 2008
40 YEARS: A HOMECOMING OF UE'S FINE ARTISTS

WHEN: MARCH 6, 2008
TIME: 6PM
WHERE: THE CULTURAL CENTER OF THE PHILIPPINES.
MAIN GALLERY/2ND FL AND 3RD FL HALLWAYS.

CEREMONIES HELD AT THE MAIN LOBBY, CCP.

IT WILL STAY OPEN UNTIL APRIL 13, 2008. 10 TO 6 PM EVERYDAY EXCEPT MONDAYS.

OPENING CEREMONIES:

TWO TIME WORLD CHAMPION UE CHORALE STARTED WITH THE PAMBANSANG AWIT NG PILIPINAS, INVOCATION AND THE UE HYMN.

FOLLOWED BY THE 4 TIME WORLD CHAMPION THE BAYANIHAN, THE NATIONAL DANCE COMPANY OF THE PHILIPPINES. FEATURING THE "AHWAG": A MEETING OF FILIPINO TRIBESMEN IN A SYMBOLIC OFFERING IN A DANCE.

OUR VVIP GUESTS PARTICIPATED IN THE CEREMONIES LED BY THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES NOLI KABAYAN DE CASTRO WITH UEFAAA PRESIDENT ED ARCILLA BREAKING THE CLAY POT OFFERING, TOGETHER WITH MAYOR ALFREDO S. LIM OF MANILA, NATIONAL ARTIST FOR VISUAL ARTS ABDUL MARI IMAO, CCP PRESIDENT NES JARDIN, UE PRESIDENT ESTER GARCIA, ST. LUKES MEDICAL DIRECTOR JOVEN CUANANG,

90 ARTISTS FROM THE FIRST GRADUATE OF 40 YEARS (1968) TO THE PRESENT 2008. MERGING MASTERS WITH THE NEW MASTERS TO BE IN THE FIRST EVER GRAND HOMECOMING ART EXHIBIT OF THE UEFAAA.

WELCOME TO QUARENTA:
FREE ADMISSION.

PHOTOS:

THESE WERE TAKEN BY OUR VERY OWN WAYNE LIM.
PLEASE GIVE PHOTO CREDITS TO HIM IF EVER IT WOULD BE USED FOR PUBLICATION OR PROMOTION. THANK YOU.

ED ARCILLA
PRESIDENT UEFINE ARTS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
09062073285

By Lito Zulueta
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:30:00 03/03/2008

MANILA, Philippines - Salvador Convocar combines figuration and abstraction with his characteristic bravura in “Characters, Creatures and Critters” March 3-14 at 1/of Gallery, Serendra, Bonifacio Global City (tel. 9013152).

The show exhibits once again Convocar’s singular mastery of mixed media. Influenced by Louise Nevelson, Convocar’s works are really mixed-media-on-canvas approximations of the Russian-American’s sculptures.

Grid-like and multilayered, with rich forms emerging and overlapping in what appears like a geometrical quilt, Nevelson’s works are intensely felt explorations of space and sites. They seem a miniature world with its complex of flora and fauna, widths and walls.

Convocar’s works expand the space and are less constricted in composition. His colors are an industrial wash and a metallic rust, midway between monochrome and polychrome. Nevelson’s works call attention to their structure, Convocar’s to their “made-up-ness.”

But instead of Nevelson’s seeming cold detachment, a mask for her intensity, Convocar is unflaggingly engaged, almost childlike. His canvases are filled with human figures that are part whimsical, part enigmatic, framed by color washes and archaic symbols and patterns.

In his new series, the figures have become cartoonish, the colors not so much industrial as pastoral.

The naturalist streak seems evident in the subjects: birds with their wings graphically sketched like metal parts and wires, horses with their flanks and hooves like metal braces.

It is easy to see that Convocar is trying to strike a balance between the natural and the mechanical. He appears to betray the artist’s inexorable bent toward the romantic.

The new tendency may be wishful thinking since even nature has to suffer from climate change and other excesses of manufacturing overdrive and industrial pollution. Can the artist’s romantic spirit save the day for nature?

Convocar in his works insists that the artist’s calling and mission remain valid. The artist will forever paint natural landscapes, even if such are already tainted by industrial fallout. The spirit of the artist lives on, come postmodern hell or high water.

Recollections

by

Marika B. Constantino



"Come to me in the silence of the night,
Come to me in the speaking silence of a dream.
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream.
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years."
-- Christina Rossetti --

Vestiges of the past always strike a chord – discordant or harmonious, a chord nonetheless. The reality is that we are the offshoots of these memories… shared, personal, replete with sentiment.

Marina Cruz-Garcia takes stock of these reminiscences and transforms them into works of art that highlight the significance of these moments and personages. Recollections is a personal journey for the artist. It is her own way of paying homage to the people who have touched her life and those who continue to provide encouragement and motivation in her creative process. The amalgam of artifacts, relics, communal experiences and individual chronicles stimulated Marina to go through this avenue of exploration which in turn resulted into her own self-discovery.

What is more admirable about this assemblage is the fact that Marina not only allows us to travel with her, but, through her compositions, she also invites us to take our own voyage. The potency of the paintings transcends Marina's own intentions towards an experience that are more familiar to the viewer. The canvases delicately engage you to look at the various inspirations of your own personal history. They are not unabashed nor barefaced portrayals, they are subtle… lingering even. The more you stare at the highly textured works, the glaring recesses of your soul are bared.



A unifying element of this montage is the antique effect that the artist employs. Through this, Marina ably evokes a sense of nostalgia. However, despite this vintage wash, one does not get an obtrusive and flagrant depiction of the past. This attenuate quality was achieved because of how she was able to creatively incorporate her innovative compositions, temperate palette and contemporary symbolisms with the elements of memory into the pictorial plane. The combination of which, results into a balanced and ethereal window into the past, present and even the future.



The sheer intensity of the works in Recollections engages your senses to come attuned to the message that each canvas puts forth.

Simply put, a memory is one manner wherein we can embrace those whom we love, it is a retelling of who we are and more importantly, it is a way to hold on to what we never want to lose. Marina Cruz-Garcia's Recollections ably reminds us about what matters.

This Christmas season marks the debut of Anna Varona, who has come up with a show of new sculptures at Boston Gallery. Her work is a welcome addition to the growing line of Philippine sculptors, particularly women whose numbers remain small in the country. Varona joins the company of Julie Lluch, who has given her great encouragement as well as Agnes Arellano, Impy Pilapil, Charito Bitanga, Tala Contreras, Aba Dalena, Jenny Cortes and Ivi-Avellana Cosio, who does both painting and sculpture. A possible reason why not many women artists have gone into sculpture is the medium – whether wood, metal, or stone, it usually requires physical strength, as well as great dexterity from the artist.
In the case of the new sculptor, Varona, the medium of clay does not significantly constitute problems of weight, especially in the relatively small forms she turns out, although they can also be surprisingly heavy. As to the process involved, she says that clay is one of the most challenging of art media, although it is, after crayons, the first that is introduced to children in art making. For Varona, it involves both time and infinite care in the various processes that clay sculpture involves, since clay is, at the same time, hard and fragile. According to her “I enjoy working with the material because it brings me back to earth. The material has limitations therefore reminding me of my own.
It makes me truthful to myself and with this, there is no judgment, only acceptance – and with acceptance comes dignity, freedom and beauty”.
In the process of formation, clay evolves like a human being continually in change. Varona believes in communicating with the piece she is working on, just as a gardener talks to his plants to make them respond to his loving care. She communicates to them mainly in her hands as she wedges and kneads them until the wet mass becomes pliable, almost like wax. Soon, the medium will dry into a leather-hard state, turning to black, a crucial stage because cracks may form. The artist has to wait for it to become bone-dry, when it is ready for bisque firing in the kiln at 1000 degrees centigrade that will make it hard, brittle and porous. This is also where surprises may come in, never quite the same as the piece was envisioned. Glazing and cooling make up the last stage, where the figure acquires color and sheen that give it a precious quality. Varona concludes that like life, “you need to be forgiving and accepting, and most of all unwilling to give up.”
With the process summarized, Varona does not regard it as a purely technical activity requiring mental dexterity to realize a form. For, more than anything else, she has a personal intimate approach to each piece. Each one is drawn out of the depths, so that creating one becomes the material expression of a deeply felt struggle, aspiration, or search that she has tenderly coaxed of out the material that she now holds to herself like a mirror. Salaming Bulag is an example, consisting of two figures facing each other. They are both one and the same: the first lovingly scrutinizes the face of the other, reaching out with groping sensitive fingers, feeling the mold of eyes, temple and cheekbones, and how they have been shaped by life and its experiences, the fingers solicitously asking with endearment: “How has life treated you?” At the same time, it is also an image of the quest for the identity, what woman has gone through, what she has stood for, or what she has emerged from as a survivor. This piece conveys deeply felt quality; it is as though the artist kneaded material for it to acquire the stuff of life.
Si Felicia ang Martir is unusually poignant, possibly stirring feminist sentiments. The figure consists of two parts: one, a torso bending back and touching the ground with superhuman effort; and two, the head of the martyr herself resting in death on the ground. There is a strong contrast between the dynamic tension of the overstretched torso and the still head with its half-smiling and peaceful expression. Possibly derived from her life as wife and mother, but whether personal or general, it strikes a nerve in women, and men likewise, in their interrelational exchanges.
The closeness of the sculptures to her personal self is likewise conveyed in the expressive works Sa Aking Isip, Alipin sa Puso, Ipaglalaban Ko and other pieces.
Sa Aking Isip exposes the full potential of the medium and what depth it may convey, as the clay becomes transformed into a thinking face, the force of its spiritual energy breaking out in two antennae-like forms on its head. The expression is so inwardly absorbed, without the least distraction, but so pure in its concentration. As in her other works, there is no effort to idealize but always to seek the lineaments of truth, as the features become signifiers of feeling and value.

Alipin sa Puso is more outward in spirit, as it faces the world with a fierce cry issuing from its circular mouth, the figure geared for battle like a warrior with chest, shoulder and waist emblazoned with a regalia of silver, gold, and red. As in her other figures, the artist clearly does not observe classical symmetry in the limbs, but uses disequilibrium to add sharpness to the quality of figure.
Ipaglalaban Ko achieves the point where realism slips into expressionism. Uncannily enough, the face does not shout but is instead quietly, but strongly, resolute in its half-closed but focused eyes, its high eyebrows and prominent cheekbones, all in all a strongly modeled face with not a hint of distraction or loose transitions.
Nevertheless, Varona owes some debt to classical mythology when she alludes to Persephone or Demeter, as in Ang Pagdadalaga ni Perseponya (Persephone) or Demetria ang Ina. But the debt is possibly not only that of the nomenclature of personages, but a base which she begins with but in the process explores and distorts in order to bring out other directions and meanings, arriving at startling effects. Ang Pagdadalaga ni Perseponya (Persephone) shows the girl emerging fully and sinuously from a dark enclosing medium, as though to affirm her coming of age. Demetriya ang Ina recalls the truncated Venuses, but without their undisturbed physical serenity, as it bears instead the marks of punishment on body or in mind creating strange configurations that one cannot readily name.
The figures of Varona certainly bear the marks of the best sculpture: That is, when the medium or material becomes transformed by the spirit of the artist, her intentions, aspirations, messages and values. In it, she will find the joy of expressing the truth and beauty, as well as achieving full humanity and freedom.

To everyone who spent their precious time in uploading their works on our site " THANK YOU VERY MUCH". Our site is becoming more interesting.To all the rest- DON'T BE SHY!!! Start posting your works. I know you all have awesome artworks to show.