IN TU: MARK TANDOYOG's "Life According to Taste, Touch, Smell, Etc. Etc."

 (currently on exhibit until January 15, 2011 at VOCAS, 5th floor La Azotea Building, 108 Session Road)

All the diverse strings around Mark Tandoyog’s life converge in his art. The mix that is his life and the lives of those around him determines mixed media as his most comfortable expression.

A progeny of Kanakanaey parents, he pegs his native roots in La Trinidad, Benguet. This ethnic origin meets with the cosmopolitan milieu of nearby Baguio City, where he spends a lot of his time. His birth in 1972 synchronized his growing years to a dynamic period in arts and culture pivoted by the active Baguio Arts Guild. Although he studied to be a nurse at the Baguio Pines City Colleges, his feet often led him to Baguio Convention Center, then a frequent venue for art events. Constant attendance to these activities acquainted him with the artists, close enough to witness their creative process in their studios. He was unaware at that time that he was already learning a life path that was more true to his nature and passion. His college education run parallel to this, until he received his diploma in BS Nursing in 1993, his license to practice in 1995. The application of his diploma and license found its apt expression when he placed both side by side on a canvas. He stamped this artwork with the words “idiot” and “idiotcation”, Mark’s characteristic word play manifest.

He believes in balance, even of the most unlikely but effective pairs. In his art, pop meets folk, culture meets counter-culture, and seriousness meets humor and kalokohan. He plays the balance in his own lifestyle, too. You’d find him dead drunk in on instance and a 50-kilometer race finisher in another instance. Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain and Joe Strummer appeal to him as much as the Dalai Lama and Krishna resound with his inner truths.

The balance doesn’t come easy, he admits. He questions a lot. He questions what his senses perceive. He questions society. He questions, even himself, all throughout his process of creating. In this process of questioning, he breaks illusions, he creates.

For him, it was music that facilitated his awakening. Punk rock introduced him to the world behind and beyond what the senses perceive, to the discovery of truths. For his turn to draw his own statements, Mark questions, and then creates.

IN TU: ROMMEL PIDAZO

In Rommel Pidazo’s world, there is a loosely set division between artists and craftsmen, the latter being more of salesmen. His art sails both worlds.

For four years, he experienced displaying and selling his creations along Baguio’s Session Road. Set on a mat spread on the sidewalk were necklaces, earrings, bracelets, anklets he made out of junk and found items, which he combined with beads, stones, clay, cloth and metal.

In 2008, while in seclusion for several months following a major disappointment in life, he made bigger pieces that were different from his usual accessories. These creations – a bag, a flag, a vest, to name a few – eventually found themselves exhibited on the walls of Victor Oteyza Community Arts Space (VOCAS) in Baguio, on his first group show with two fellow Baguio artists.

“Hindi ka tatawaging artist kung nakalatag sa sahig ang gawa mo. Vendor ang tawag sa iyo. Kung nasa dingding ang gawa mo, artist ang tawag sa iyo,” he observes. He doesn’t have qualms about it, at least not for someone who has been called both.

Although any label doesn’t change the essence of his works, his creations have been evolving. From accessories no bigger than what the hand can enclose, he stretched open and free, making pieces now that are big enough to cradle a baby, another even larger than a door.

The first product of this transition was a belt he made from hundreds of beer can tabs collected in an all-night art event. Next he made a belt bag from an assortment of wires, buttons, bottle caps, damaged cell phone cases, used ballpens, plastic straws, wood and anything that he found anywhere, adding to these the usual beads, stones, clay, cloth and metal.

         He seeks to create things that people haven’t seen before, using things that people have already seen before, and creating a “What’s that?” response. Garbage and junk as materials are perfect for his purpose, posing greater creative challenges and opportunities for him. Because of his choice of materials, it is concomitant that he takes frequent walks anywhere and everywhere. During these solitary explorations, he is able to contemplate, and collect whatever is strewn along his path. Every piece he creates is uniquely shaped by these walks. The things he incidentally finds on walks, even if it be the same path, will always be different.

“Garbage and junk is colorful. It is available everywhere and nobody wants them. You just have to put them together in a beautiful way. I see my work as a process of giving new life to a dead object, of reaccepting a rejected object.”

Count on Rommel Pidazo to challenge labels and reinvent perceptions.

IN TU: REI CHAN

There are a lot of excuses to be unproductive, not to create art.

Growing up next-door to a family of artists convinced Rei Chan as a young boy that art and being an artist was confined to those who are rich. He often played in the yard near where he could observe his artist neighbors. One would be painting in front of an easel. Another would be developing photographs, hanging pictures fresh from the darkroom to be air-dried. Another would be playing a musical instrument. It seemed impossible for him to be in any of those positions, and if he persisted, he felt as if he would only be frustrated. His path was set to getting on finishing school, landing on a job, and having money. Being an artist was not considered an option in education, a job, and especially for money.

“But when you see what you want, what you are, if you see what you want to be, you go for it,” Rei Chan says. “And it doesn’t leave you until you come to terms with it.”

Rei Chan has tried many other things. Although the need to create hammers on him, never leaving until, as he says, he comes to terms to with. “Yung pumupukpok sa isip mo mula pagkabata, ilabas mo,” he counsels himself.

Blocks and hindrances in virtually everything we do crop up anywhere, anytime. Instead of letting these stop or delay Rei Chan in his creative process, he includes them. Instead of putting effort in getting rid of these, he incorporates them. His latest works gather the blocks and distractions in his creative process and builds upon them, with them.

His children, four of them ranging from ages five to twelve, sometimes join him painting. “One of them even tells me what looks beautiful and what does not, as if he’s an art critic,” he says, clearly amused. When it comes to inspiration, when he needs some, his children give him enough.

Artists create.

He says, “You need triggers to be able to create. I think that’s what life’s troubles and hardships can be used for. In the end, you do need distractions and destruction.”

He has proven every now and then that distraction and destruction cover the first base of creating a piece of art.

“You draw strength from desperation,” Rei Chan affirms.

Any excuse to be unproductive can be the very motivation to create.

IN TU: PAULO SUNGGAY

It is perhaps expected that someone who grew up in an environment rife with art, surrounded by artists, will turn out to be an artist himself and create art. Paulo Sunggay is one such person. His youth coincided with the active years of the Baguio Arts Guild. At that time, art exhibits and events happened often and he attended most of them. He was regularly in the company of artists, some of them older, whose views in life and expression he was exposed to. Truly, artists can’t be apart from their milieu, not apart from history around them.

“But it’s something that boils down to the personal,” Paulo asserts.

He adds, “Even if you’re surrounded by works of art, even if you grew up with artists, what you’ll turn out to be still depends on something within you, something which is a part of you that you cannot deny or disregard.”

Paulo Sunggay’s life course led him to finish a degree in Industrial Engineering. Somewhere in the backstreets of this city he manages and owns Katipunan Restaurant, your not-so-usual kainan which also doubles as a your not-so-usual gallery, hosting mostly group shows of Baguio artists. But boiling down to the personal, the part of him that he can’t deny or disregard produced his first exhibit in Tam-awan Village in 1998.

It is this same part that churned out artworks that are on exhibit now. This time, he finds that he’s more confident with his art and his creative process. His previous hesitations have diminished, if not eliminated.

“The process of creating makes you strong. You feel a different energy,” he explains.

He does silkscreen/serigraph, a medium he plays with, exploring the pockets of creativity in instruments used for mass production. He is challenged in making an artwork feel organic even if creating it involves means that standardizes designs and patterns.

“If you look at the finished artwork, it can’t explain everything. You have to see the process,” he further explains. His own process, he describes, is intuitive. When he starts, he doesn’t have the whole picture. It is part of the process that he questions along the way, until the artwork becomes complete.

As an observation, he adds, “I find it amazing that if you produce a piece of art and it is liked, no one can tell if you were depressed or in pain while making it, even if you were.” That, of course, is still something personal.

IN TU: CARLO VILLAFUERTE

Working with fabrics, particularly sewing, is a gender-neutral pursuit. The women in Carlo Villafuerte’s family work with fabrics and threads. His father is a carpenter. His mother is a factory worker and for the past twenty years she has been sewing gloves for export. His grandmother does a lot of crocheting, making designs with repeating patterns of triangles, squares, rings, whorls and diamonds. His home economics teacher in high school told him his stitches in sewing class were well done and beautiful.

Carlo Villafuerte does sew. He works with fabrics and threads. And he does a great job with it. This medium of his art, with the influences of the women in his family, clearly begun at home, as it is with many things that start at home.

He does his art from a certain motivation. “Anger is a driving force. And it is sometimes my driving force,” he admits. But the resulting work of art that you find at the end of his process is something colorful, playful, pleasant, and hardly showing any signs of its darker beginnings.

The designs of his first works, evident in the first show of fabric art he had in 2008, comprised of patterns, much like his grandmother’s crochet. An inevitable expansion produced a bunch of works that take off from his usual repeating patterns, this time to include narratives and stories. The pieces on exhibit now turned out after a month of self-imposed exile where he did nothing but sew.

When his marriage failed, he cut up and sewed the clothes his wife left behind. He scouts the wagwagan, rummaging through heaps of used clothing in Hilltop, for fabric he can get for as cheap as ten pesos for three pieces. At one time he almost run out of clothes to wear because he cut his own clothes and used them for his works. His hands are calloused. Numerous needle pricks mark his fingers.

Perhaps it is because we want to move away from pain and anger, to change states when we feel hurt or pissed off, that we find a well of creative potential in such dark and down emotions or situations. A good friend and fellow artist once told him to stop dwelling in his painful past. And he did. He now feels as if a heavy burden, that something painful, is finally gone, making him whole. He creates art to actively take part in the future, his future.