Bed time reading

I type and Jose reads. He reads before i even finish typing. Not much ado. We do it for fun.  

Rock Your Wardrobe!

This is an alternative way to

1.  Conserve the natural materials used in the production of clothes especially use of electricity while clothes are being sewn at night and yes while the sewing machine's motor is plugged????

2. It saves dressmakers from consuming softdrinks while they try to meet their quota needing the much needed sugar rush????

3.  Pre loved items have already been broken in. Remember when you were young and how your pair of new shoes gave you blisters while you went around your neighborhood and relatives on Christmas day for "papasko"? Same with clothes, especially with denim jeans that they try to sell looking battered and soiled- well you don't have to be fooled that way anymore. Pre-loved clothes are not artificially worn-looking. They honestly are!

4. Branded fashion clothes? Let the other fashionistas spend their fortune buying them. If you wait and you know how the stylist people behave economically when it comes to clothes, you get the slightly worn and severly slashed clothes in pre-loved sales a.k.a. Garage sale like the poster above. 

5. Not all best buys are new and mall-fresh. If you are impulsive, you are a compromised shopper. Why not let others do the impulsive buying and you buy the after-thoughts? 

 I have a small collection of branded clothes for fun. They are great as your ootd's, you can even do selfies wearing a very expensive Alexander Mcqueen for an obscenely cheap price in the ukay ukay.  I will not in my dreams want to get them from a rack where a dress could cost you a small classroom in a God-forsaken area.  

Otherwise I get mine personally sewn for me by a dear friend who owns a dress shop.  Where the dressmaker thinks of me all the time while making the dress. Oh well, they are privy to body secrets too but that's how clothes to fit are made. 

I am extremely awed by how the young women i know around in my neighborhood are doing their garage sale upscale and really classy!  I cannot wait to see their clothes up in my garage. You would want to see a fashion design graduate's collection of clothes. I want! Or a young artist's who is into edgy but  comfortable no nonsense fashion! Or my daughter-in-law who would fit into a girl's dress. I know it's hard to find adult clothes that would fit that frame, but her fashion sense rocks so there- she has found the mature dresses for those who are in her size range. I hope she does not sell her white hippie skirt. I am still hoping to fit into that! Lol!

We try to do little things to save the world   Sometimes advocacies can be found on the streets. Sometimes in garages. 

Tell-tale signs of life and work

Visible remains of the paint I used last night and the marks from my favorite couch. My feet are wearing shadow boots! Most comfortable footwear. Warm and soft. That's because the storm has left and sunlight is back to where I perch to think in the morning.

Quietly now

Mornings like miracles happen softly and gently. An angry heart and an empty one can benefit from the slow proddings of the day because it is not agitating. And it takes a miracle to notice that the break of day is the triumph over what could have been nights that will go on forever. 

Truth and Consequence

For my coming Watercolor Exhibit and launch of 2016 Happiness Calendar on Oct. 24, my friend and former neighbor in Frogglerocks, Chati Coronel Mamisao sent me this set of questions for me to answer. It was a good exercise to know where, what, who and why I am. 

C:  When did this project start and what made you want to do this?

 

E:  It started last year when I was invited to join the St Theresa’s art fair.  I thought of compiling my watercolor paintings for a calendar for my art  to be more functional.  A friend told me that she will try to sell it and add a few hundreed pesos so she can donate to the projects to rebuild the lives of the Yolanda typhoon victims.  Pope Francis was coming that time for the same reason but in a different way.  I am not a very charitable person.  Not in ways I know other people are but maybe an angel’s whisper made me decide that I wanted to do it with all my he-art.  Then the frenzy and madness started.  I was just obsessed to sell as many to provide a place where learning can take place for the Yolanda children.   

 

C:   How long have you been doing water color painting? Water color is a difficult medium for a lot of people. Why did you choose this medium to work with.

 

My  watercolor affair was not that serious until two years ago though it somehow started in 1997. It was an on-off affair, more off than on, as I was very much married to my life project which is my school.  I felt guilty loving how watercoloring was challenging me and how it was hard to tame and how it gave me so much pleasure at the same time.  Watercolor is magical. I am always awed at how water would behave differently on different paper, different angles, then how a brush stroke can create countless possibilities.. Then all the combinations are brought to life by the splatter, bleed, bursts of color!  I like it transparent andhardly there but definitely there. I love its unpredictabiity. I don’t even have to paint! The medium does it for me.

 

I am a survivor of difficult situations or maybe one who wants to create something beautiful  from mistakes and unfriendly circumstances.  So maybe also why the attraction to water color.

 

C:  You founded HEDCen and made this beautiful school flourish and thrive. How do you feel about the school now? What is the connection between the you that is the Muse/Head of the school and the you that is The Artist?

 

The school just became.  I enjoy the process of making things happen.  Definitely, it is what makes a work of art beautiful.  Yes, school is work.  It is a religion even but the challenges of creating it, is art in itself.  It is like painting without painting.  You just know in your heartwhat you want to happen and the result is very much like the changes that happen when you paint on an empty canvas.  In the end, the outcome of anything is a result of a plan and joyful accidents!  

C:  When I first met you, you were painting by the Tungtong River (do you remember that? Ces brought us down there with all the other girls that we're going to be in her show, including Ana). That was maybe 15 years ago. Did you have an inkling then that the school would be as successful as it is now? Did you think then that you would use your work as a painter to be able to help people?

I knew then that the school has no place in this world if it does not fulfill its purpose.  There is no other way but for it to be “successful” , vanity aside.  It should succeed.

 

I will always be an amateur when it comes to being a “painter”.  I am confident with everything I do related to school, but actually very shy and unaccomplished with my so called “art”.  So I gave my art a purpose.  Then I am not that shy anymore because it is now the purpose and not the art that should be in the center of it.   I cannot yet say that I am helping pseople with my art.  I have yet to see that.  And these are no ordinary people I would like to help. They are children.  I also do not have the illusion that I am doing it alone.  I am doing it with all the other people who have allowed themselves to be part of this mania.  

 

Yes Chati.  I remember meeting you in Tungtong river now that you mentioned it.  You were just a wiisp of a girl but already a gentle human whose mind is on fire and walks the earth gently… how do you say that? 

C:  Please tell me a little bit about the Tungtong River ( I might use the river as a metaphor for life. Naks!).

This river is a small one but it is very much a river just the same.  It is home to beautiful creatures and species, seen or unseen.  It is trying to survive the ravages of pollution and misuse but comes out gurgling and babbling, whispering, raging and nurturing.  

C:  What now? What is the future of this project for you? What is the future for you as an artist?

 

Ang hirap nito.  Okay.  The future of the project is not primarily for me.  It is for the children who will benefit from this.  This is very small compared to the magnitude of devastation in their lives, in their psyche.   I am just doing a bit of what I can and what I know.

 

Aha! Its future for me as an artist?  Wala siguro.  It provided practice and that is good enough.  But I hope to continue to use my art to build.  I want my art to also give healing, touch the heart or make one who views it realize that courage is the main thing.  Without it, one cannot proceed. In my work, it is not the masterful stroke that is visible nor any attempt to compete with reality, but the impressions and bits and pieces of my existence, who I am, what I feel. 

Thank you Chati! 

 

 

 

 

Keep growing and shining and smiling and ... Be happy

Been lazy. Just taking it all in and so I am not writing. But there are so many things to document and thoughts that occur  spontaneously without thinking and ideas that are leaping from consciousness to sleep. 

One thing: one does not stop growing. I mean in terms of what one can learn from other people and the inspiration that wakes imagination. 

And the world is at everyone's feet ready to teach! 

A few months ago, i was embracing an ascetic lifestyle but one can still be simple inspite of one's taste for beauty and that it is too dry and boring to embrace oldness. 

A few months back, I was preparing for my last 20 years or so on earth by stripping. Today, i write fullness and juiciness and lush! 

Please come to my exhibition of Happiness till November 7 in the Art Room of HEDCen, Beverly Hills Subd., antipolo.  Opening is on October 24 at 3 pm.