Earth Day, art day

Today is Earth Day and our art group WAWART heads to Bluewater Maribago Beach Resort to join the eco-art festival being held there. It’s going to be a big fiesta of family-oriented cultural activities for the resort in Mactan and its branches in Sumilon and Panglao islands.

These include a fashion show by  fashion design students of the University of San Carlos, a reading of poems by the group Bathalad, an art fair, printmaking workshop, and exhibit by our group.

One of the highlights of the event is the launching of the big bamboo starfish installation, which is a collaborative work between the National Artist Ben Cabrera (better known as Ben Cab), Manila-based architect-sculptor Benjie Reyes, and WAWART.

The two Bens are famous artists and our group is practically just a new kid on the block. Yet this was going to be the second time WAWART would be invited by Bluewater to do art in their premises. The first time was during our debut exhibit entitled “Sawum”, which was opened by Miss Universe runner-up Shamcey Supsup.

But for today, it’s not  Miss Universe but Mother Earth herself who is the muse for our work, which are a collection of chimes made from junk materials. Each of us in the group and our three invited artist friends (Fr. Jason Dy, SJ, Jojo Sagayno, and the French artist Remy Rault) was tasked to turn garbage into our version of art chimes that would be suspended from the beams of the bamboo starfish that Benjie Reyes designed and installed at the beachfront of the resort.

At the center of the star fish is Ben Cab’s chimes, which are a set of wooden bells. Microphones are also installed to amplify the different sounds created by the art chimes, which can range from the clinging of bottles, the clang of cans, the click-clack of bamboo tubes, and even disco music from a disassembled electronic toy top that also blinks LED lights in assorted colors and shoots red laser as it turns.

The latter is just one Remy’s interesting set of kitschy chimes, which he made from “ready mades” or plastic toys and kitchenware bought at a downtown mall selling cheapos from China. Others include baby rattles tied together to form a gigantic bead bracelet suspended from a beam.

Aside from this outdoor installation, our group also made indoor installations for the Bluewater Gallery, a small gallery in thatched roof. Assigned as curator for this show is Nomar Miano who thought of “transparency” as the theme for this unique exhibit. Assorted items made from clear plastic are assembled on top of panels, one of which seems to penetrate the glass wall of the gallery, thus blurring the line between outside and inside space.

The clear plastic items also add to this irony in the use of space: they are there but they look as if they are not there. So viewers can go around the gallery seeing through these objects against the gallery’s single wall of glass that was the inspiration behind the theme of this collaborative show.

This makes us ponder on the question of invisible reality and the irony that what is unseen and the unknown may actually matter more than visible matter.
The gallery show and the outdoor installation are not selling works, itself an unusual arrangement for an exhibit here in Cebu, where art is often seen as commodity. But this is not the first time that Bluewater, which now positions itself as an artist-friendly resort, has offered its gallery and outdoor spaces to the artists, often at no cost to them.

Still guests may view the artist’s small paintings, drawings and prints displayed at the art fair. Mostly unframed, the works are marked down much lower that if you find them displayed in an exhibit. So it’s an opportunity to buy art cheap and support the artists who support the cause of the environment.
Happy Earth Day!