7/30/14

Too Hot!!!








I have been waiting for the opportunity to paint with oils once again but the temperature outside has been brutally hot so I have to settle for drawing indoors.



7/26/14

Aubergine









Aubergine. Watercolor on Arches paper. November 14, 2010. Images below, just loving the real thing. This was breakfast one morning.  The word "eggplant" comes from the description of the white variety of the genus Solanum, specifically Solanum ovigerum (top left). What we commonly refer to as eggplant is Solanum melongena or Aubergine as it is commonly called in British. The eggplant is a member of the family of nightshades or Solanaceae which includes a variety of trees, shrubs and herbs, so diverse it includes some psychoactive and toxic plants such as daturas. Solanaceae includes eggplants, chili peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, daturas, petunias, brugmansias and mandrakes among 98 genera and over 2,700 species. 

      




Gallery - Behance -  Google + - Society 6



For Breakfast I Am Eating Members Of A Couple Of Families



For breakfast, I am having several members of a couple of families: Solanum melongena with Solanum lycopersicum, Allium stipatatum, Allium cepa, Allium sativum sautéed with the oil of the fruit Olea europaea and a pinch of sodium chloride. 


The word "eggplant" comes from the description of the white variety of the genus Solanum, specifically Solanum ovigerum (top left). What we commonly refer to as eggplant is Solanum melongena or Aubergine as it is commonly called in British. The eggplant is a member of the family of nightshades or Solanaceae which includes a variety of trees, shrubs and herbs, so diverse it includes some psychoactive and toxic plants such as daturas. Solanaceae includes eggplants, chili peppers, bell peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, daturas, petunias, brugmansias and mandrakes among 98 genera and over 2,700 species.


7/13/14

Alocthonous





I love maps. I love plans, house plans, building plans, architectural drawings. I love them more than the actual structures themselves, except when they are beautiful enough to me, I love to be inside them, outside them, admiring and being awed.




I thought I wanted to be an architect but nobody hired architects in the Philippines. Heck, I don't even know if they have building codes, of course they do, but I am sure they are easy to bypass with the right bribe. If you go to the Philippines, you will know what I mean. If they do hire architects to design homes, most owners will just bastardize the houses by adding out-of-place extensions and chicken coops. Except for corrupt politicians who live in mansions and rich Filipinos who live in very nice homes, the rest live in humble abodes. I do love native huts. Someday, I would like to retire in the province and build a house that hopefully will be sturdy and strong enough, it won't be blown away by the typhoons and high enough that the floods won't engulf it. However, I will build a nipa hut where I will take my siesta during brutally hot and humid afternoons, without air-conditioning.




In 1973 during my senior year in high school, I first heard the University of the Philippines Carillon Tower play a melody. It was December and I was on my way to Mount Makiling to attend the First Asia Pacific Girl Scout Encampment. My sister Mercedes was busy with graduate school, she was not able not go home for the Christmas holidays. We spent Christmas together before I left for camp in Los Baños, Laguna. I remember how quiet it was walking around the almost empty campus. On the way to the U.P. Chapel to attend mass, the Carillon Tower played a Christmas hymn. During that time, the music of the Carillon Tower was manually played by a clavier. In later years when I attended U.P. Diliman, the clavier was on its lasts keys and the bells were weathered. I am happy to read that the tower has been recently restored with new bells forged in Europe and a new organ replaced the clavier.





I remember going to college, how anxious I was but also excited. I was petrified with Chemistry and Physics. Ugh! They were required courses. I also remember not knowing what to study until one hour before registration when I decided to enroll in the pre-nursing program. My daughter will be attending university in the fall. She has been to her future campus many times during her middle and high school years to attend state level competitions but this time, she will be a freshman attending the College of Natural Sciences. I wish her the best and I pray for her happiness. It is both exciting and stressful time, full of expectations and demands. But she will also learn to explore the world on her own. My dearest Em, I pray for your happiness and success. Do your best, have fun and learn.




In 1987, my husband and I went to a picture framing store to have some pictures professionally framed. It was an expensive project but we thought the pictures were worth the cost. At the store, I saw a large framed copy of the Murerplan. I fell in love with it. The store owner told us that the person who had it framed did not return to pick it up after he realized the cost. I know it was just a replica and at that time, one had to probably go to Zurich to pick up a copy, this was before the Internet and online shopping. He sold the framed map to us for $85.00. For a long time it hanged in one of the living room walls. After a while, I rearranged the pictures and put aside the framed Murerplan in the corner. Last month I rediscovered it. I was always in love with the carefully crafted and illustrated buildings of the city of Zurich in 1576 by Jos Murer. I decided to redraw some of the buildings and incorporate them in my own make-believe village in the middle of a karst. Geographically, I don't know if that is possible or if that is sensible but I wanted to draw a karst, some European buildings, very tiny people, a village, the University of Texas Tower Building (Main Building), a German pub, the Bacolod City Plaza gazebo, the U.P. Carillon and for my best friend, Cornell University's Barnes Hall. These past weeks I have been reminiscing and so I infused this drawing with memories, dreams and hopes. This morning I thought about retiring and opening a studio-cafe. Then reality told me to go outside, scrub the deck, pull the weeds, arrange the storeroom and garden materials and tools and pick up the dog poo in the brutal summer heat!




While drawing the buildings and home in close proximity, I imagined what would happen if one of the homes caught fire. Well one did and the gutted remains still stand. Oh my, these buildings and homes have very sturdy firewalls!




How did I sustain my enthusiasm for this tedious illustration that will not pay for our next meal? I imagined I worked in some of these buildings or lived in a home after home after home... or someone I love did. That was enough to induce me to treat each structure with care and very tiny humans formicating the cobbled streets and flea markets and stairs ascending to higher or descending to lower elevations with delight. Yes, I have been day dreaming!




I love the texture of the girl's t-shirt and her rolled up denim cut-off shorts. See if you can find the teacher leading a row of her young pupils. Stay cool and away from crazy hot-headed people. I met one yesterday. What a loser and a loon!



Alocthonous II.  How Not To Be An Architect.  Zurich meets Diliman meets Austin meets Sanqing meets Ithaca meets Dornstetten meets Bacolod.
Pen and ink on 14"x17" Paris paper.




7/7/14

How Not To Be An Architect




Since I was a little girl until I was a teenager I enjoyed making model towns from various materials in different settings. I also enjoyed drawing floor plans, I drew thousands of them eliciting my mother's concern. I thought I would study architecture but I realized I preferred the models more than the real things. I made a model town out of cardboards and styrofoam and painted each building's details with watercolor. On the top photo, my sister is inspecting a section of the model which filled our entire apartment when I was in college studying nursing and later speech therapy. I had to stack the sectioned layers for storage. I used matchbox cars to dot the streets. This was the last model I made when I was 19 years old. One day, I finally said goodbye to my hobby and crumpled each section then threw away the entire model town. I saved the matchbox cars. Today I still like models, miniatures and matchbox cars. My current drawing is a tribute to my childhood obsession.




7/6/14

Contradiccioun





Acrophobic beings who live in high places
Next door to a bitter and unhappy gay couple
Who send their beloved adopted child to day care run by a misanthrope
And are citizens of a county who elect a bumbledom for a president.




7/5/14

Nothing To Do With Karst




"Oh my God! Art is sublime. Without it, life is empty. Nothingness. I have drawn millions of lines and splashed gallons of colors." Him, Himself, The Artist.


Read too many of those.
Heard too many artists' laments.
You are indeed somebody.
except...
Art does not heal
It does not cure cancer
excise a melanoma,
cauterize a wart nor
drain pus from a boil.
It does not mend broken hearts
even abort unwanted babies.
Planned Parenthood
happily does the latter.
"Art heals"
is a worn out cliche'.
Denial.
Art is pretentious
selfish, self serving
arrogant and phony.
Forgettable.
What may be an art treasure
to one is trash to another.
Warhol was not Titian
but then again one may prefer
Warhol over Titian.
Arts and crafts to some
baubles and kitsch to others.
Fill up the landfills
like styrofoam.
Art is self centered
exhibitionistic
pompous
and insecure.
It is lucky if it serves one,
the community, that's another.
It does not feed those
ravaged by famine
capture kidnapped girls
What good did those hashtags do?
Self promotion and
publicity.
Symbolic
of helplessness
and incompetence.
It does not stop an epidemic
neither resuscitate an infarcted heart
It cannot rebuild broken communities.
perhaps as trinkets for tourists
with proceeds going to charity.
A bake sale will do just the same.
It does not stop war
nor stifle terrorists from maiming
innocent children.
If it ever does something good
to someone it is because that someone
opens the mind to accept it.
Much like candy or ice cream to a child,
or lipstick, beer, perfume
a new car.
Except there are those whose
lines and colors jolt the brain
now and then
much like a
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor
or perhaps cocaine?
I have not tried.
Maybe cake, beer or wine.
I hate the smell of beer and
don't care for wine.
A clean house, perhaps,
a neat pile of freshly laundered clothes.
So go ahead bake, drink and vacuum.
Take a photo and post it in
instagram or facebook.
Much better than sharing hoaxes
and silly memes
or bad poetry.
Ah look at that
a painting to match the couch
and throw pillows.
Sublime!