A FILIPINO CHILD?S drawing of a house is the inspiration of a three-dimensional representation currently on exhibit at a London art gallery.

Nine-year-old Chloe Seraspe Reynaldo is delighted that a house she has drawn on paper when she was around 5 years old is installed in the exhibit ?Homes /\ Houses? in a 3-D version by conceptual artist Boris Kajmak.

?I?d love to see it,? she says, referring to the exhibit which runs until Dec. 23 at the Tenderpixel Gallery, a new place where emerging artists can show their work in London.

?It?s just wishful thinking,? says mom Pamela, who manages the only Kumon tutoring service in Kalibo, Aklan, where the family had moved from Manila in 2006, and where Chloe is a fourth grader at the Infant Jesus Academy.

The artist chanced upon the drawing on the Facebook page of Chloe?s dad Michael, a regional project manager at PLAN International, an NGO that serves blighted communities in Samar, Mindoro and the Bicol region, among other places.

Born in Croatia but now based in London, visual artist Kajmak had requested the Reynaldos for permission to reproduce the image into a maquette that he wished to include in his upcoming exhibit of small-scale 3-D representations of houses drawn by kids.

Imagined neighborhood

The Reynaldos said yes, and now Chloe?s drawing is part of a miniature neighborhood as imagined by children now on view in London. A photo of its maquette version also graces the exhibition poster, with the credit ?Chloe?s Home.?

As with most kiddie art, Chloe?s is a crude crayon drawing of a structure with a low front building with chimney and a taller, two-story building in the back. It is colored in red, orange and blue, with the structure and the details in dark outlines. The lines that denote a path to the door and the lines on the sides convey the idea that the house stands on a hill.

It was exactly the refreshing lack of geometrical integrity and three-dimensional accuracy that attracted Kajmak. In ?Homes /\ Houses,? his second solo exhibition, the artist challenges the idea that there is a right or wrong sense of perspective. Children?s drawings are more emotional representations.

Genetic

Although Chloe has had a brief exposure to a summer art workshop, her mother thinks the creativity is in her DNA. Dad Michael was an illustrator before he shifted to NGO work.

Pamela recalls Chloe started doodling as early as age 2 and would use any surface to draw on. ?We would sometimes find her arms and legs covered with drawings. It used to crack us up.?

These days Chloe prefers drawing on paper using oil pastels. And she likes to draw people now. ?Girls mostly,? she says, ?just standing around, doing nothing much, wearing nice clothes.? She has other interests as well, such as writing stories (See Page K3), making clay figures, not to mention playing video games.

Someday she wants to take over her mom?s math tutoring business, which would be a piece of cake for this numbers whiz whose grade in mathematics last grading period was 99 (same with science).

There goes that myth that artists are not supposed to be good in math and science.

Come to think of it, the American founder of Tenderpixel Gallery, Ethan Ilfeld, was a chess master by age 11 and a double major in math and physics at Stanford University, but has crossed over to film and interactive media art.

If Chloe is headed the same way, she has quite a future ahead of her.

The ?Homes /\ Houses? exhibit runs until Dec. 23 at Tenderpixel Gallery, located at 10 Cecil Court, London.