Monday, August 25, 2008

Like some of the great adventures in art, it started with a small object. In this case a kaleidoscope.

“It has two discs with jewels and when you turn it, the images are amazing — like stained-glass windows in a church,” enthuses Mia Ongpin Herbosa about a particular kaleidoscope that was lent to her by an acquaintance, a key moment leading up to her latest exhibition that will open this Thursday.

“The kaleidoscope is not just an instrument, it has something to do with an allegory of life itself,” she explains. If you look at it from the outside, it’s merely a vessel, nothing oracular about it. But when you peer inside, you get these visions. Remember how John Lennon once sang about skies with diamonds, cellophane flowers and girls with kaleidoscope eyes? Mia’s epiphany is similar. Human beings are kaleidoscopes of sorts: we may be made of matter that rots and is corruptible, but from the inside we could peer into another dimension — one illuminated by the light of spirituality. This is the human condition; everyone is a repository of varying visions.

“I was sitting on the floor of my studio with my 15 paintings around me, and it felt like looking through a kaleidoscope and seeing (aspects of) my life. It was a weave of emotions, visual, tactile, even audible. Like any child’s kaleidoscope, the physical look of it differs so entirely from the feelings you get by peering into it and looking at the light. Its capacity to make you see and feel something so joyful and magical is what constantly draws me to expressing myself in visual art,” she explains.

Mia presents her latest paintings in oil and mixed media in her 10th exhibition titled, aptly enough, “Life’s Kaleidoscope,” which opens on Aug. 28, 6:30 p.m., at The Ayala Museum ArtistSpace. The show is on view until Sept. 11.

Her present works are far more personal, more introspective, and in some cases more experimental.

“I am using mixed media now — oil with delicate Japanese rice papers, handmade Nepalese marbled paper and Burmese paper that I found in a New York supply store. I also use many antique silk, provencal cotton and even woman’s hair. The overlapping textures gave me a feeling of depth and gave me a wider sense of expression. This is my way of understanding my feelings about cycles of life — ‘life’s kaleidoscope.’ I learned this printmaking technique called chine collé, which gives you different feelings depending on what types of paper you use. I thought if you can do this in printmaking you could also apply it in oil — superimpose paper or natural fibers on top of it or beside it, using rabbit-skin glue as adhesive.”

Mia has always been entranced by gold leaf and has an attraction for Gustav Klimt’s work — a duality of “draftsmanship and fierce abandon to the power and psychology of color, rhythm and shapes.”

She stresses, “Some works in the show are precursors of things-to-be, still forming in my mind. Just like me, my art is still growing, expanding, it is still becoming.”

From the time Mia started exhibiting as a student in The Art Students’ League of New York in ’95, she has dealt with motifs of her life as artist in the Big Apple. (One of her achievements is becoming the first Filipina to win the top prize at the Annual Junior Scholarship Members Exhibition held at the Salmagundi Club in New York, a center for American Art since 1871.) She remembers painting in this building on West 57th Street and going to Central Park with its “trees and rolling slopes two blocks north,” as well as going ice-skating at Wollman Rink during a break in class.

For Mia’s latest show, she dug deeper — digging through stacks and stacks of sepia photographs of her ancestors, as well as digging through ineffable things piled up in her own psyche.

She remembers sifting through photographs from the early 1900s of her Lolo Luis who chronicled life with his own trusty Leica camera. Some of those photos would become the basis for her paintings. “Clown Brothers (Luis and Dante)” shows her grandfather with his brother Dante, who passed away at a very young age. A painting titled “Portal in my Mind (Alfonso and his Leica)” depicts her great-grandfather Alfonso — a foremost collector of Rizaliana, and an early collector of Luna and Hidalgo — taking his self-portrait. Somewhere in the painting a dragonfly symbolizes the ethereal; and the stairs, something transcendent.

“He was my first inspiration to venture into doing something more personal. Art rooted in my ancestry — who I was, who am I… He was an aesthete and a lover of noble ideas.

“Luis and Cats” shows her lolo carrying two of his pets. Another one, “Once Upon a Time,” juxtaposes rich sepia tones with collaged paper. She explains, “For these paintings I wanted to capture childhood, a way of rendering memories through art.”

There are newer memories also.

“Lana and Jada” is a painting of Mia’s daughter with a Labrador who lived in the resort where they stayed in and who followed them around like a pet of their own. “Mutya (Monica)” is a combination of oil paint, torn-up bits of kimono and real hair. Mia points out the therapeutic effects of art. “Not only painting, even the tearing of the paper, the cutting, the pasting, the whole creative process.”

Mia reveals how art saved her from a depressing moment in her life.

“I got very sick in the States for almost the whole of 2006. I got burned out by the pace and coldness of New York. Even simple things like the weather would affect me. I felt nauseous every time I stepped out of the apartment. I realized that this was because my painting took a backseat in my life. I think it did something to my spirit, affected my body. Some people are predisposed to expressing themselves. It’s like a lifeline in a way: a dancer has to dance, a writer has to write… If you’re cut off from it, that’s when problems arise. When I rested and then painted again more regularly, bumalik ’yung energy ko. Something opened up in my mind.”

It was like looking at the world again with a whole new kaleidoscope of colors.

* * *

“Life’s Kaleidoscope” opens on Aug. 28, 6:30 p.m., at The Ayala Museum ArtistSpace, second floor, Glass Wing, Greenbelt Park, Makati Ave. corner De La Rosa St., Makati City. For information, call Ayala Museum at 757-7117 to 21 local 31, visit www.miaherbosa.com and larcenciel.blogspot.com, or SMS 0917-8901219.

By Araceli Z. Lorayes

A chance meeting among neighbors paved the way for artist Mia Herbosa’s paintings to be exhibited until Oct. 31 at Bravo Restaurant at Festival Mall in Alabang, Muntinlupa. Thus, the restaurant’s patrons are able view art created in the European tradition with their pasta and osso bucco.

Elaine Herbosa — owner of L’Arc en Ciel, the artists’ atelier in Ayala Alabang — hosted the neighborhood party in her Tuscan-inspired house, and among those present were Raffy and Gia Suarez, owners and proprietors of Bravo Restaurant. After viewing the artworks produced by Mia, Gia proposed an exhibit.

Other featured artists are Miguel Buhay, Ditas Dominguez, Elizabeth Garrovillo, Elaine Herbosa, Carla Kim, Pilar Quiros, Ruth Santiago, Vernice Songco and Margie Villonco. The paintings on display are a mixture of portraits, still lifes and landscapes.

Mia Herbosa’s formidable talent as a portraitist was well demonstrated with two portraits in graphite on paper, and two oil paintings. The two graphite portraits, “Portrait of a Lady” and “Tyrone,” demonstrated her mastery of line: fluid in “Lady,” and precise in “Tyrone.” She is equally adept at color — the skin tones of the oil painting of a male nude rendered the portrait both luminous and vibrant.

Herbosa, who studied advanced art courses at the Art Students’ League in New York, is in Manila for a one-year sabbatical, and teaches at the L’Arc en Ciel. The instructor follows the atelier method, which is an interactive teaching method by immersion, wherein a group of learning artists all work at different levels, whether they be beginner, intermediate or advanced. They are guided by several instructors and all works are done from life: actual still life set-ups, plein air landscape painting, live models posing for their portraits.

To learn more about L’arc en Ciel atelier, visit http://larcencielgallery.blogspot.com.

THE HOLLYWOOD FILM “Dead Poets Society” (released in 1989) popularized the Latin phrase “carpe diem” to the youth of the 1990s as a call of admonition to live life to the fullest.

Mia O. Herbosa, now in her 30s, belongs to that same generation to whom this call had perhaps the most meaning then. In her exhibition at the Alliance Française de Manille, she appropriates this phrase as title but with a different twist.

Now a young mother, Mia has further developed into an introspective artist. Instead of adopting the authoritative tone to “seize the day,” she quietly “takes a journey” (the literal translation of the Latin word “carpo”) to reflect over her life story.

The artist’s personal introduction to the exhibition relates a particular fascination over her great-grandfather, Alfonso Ongpin, whose personal art collection was instrumental in introducing her to the arts. She writes:

“Growing up, I often stared at the many wonderful oil paintings on the wall of my lola’s home… Though his (Alfonso’s) beloved collection is now no longer intact, I feel, in a great way, his passion for art and beauty has left its mark on his family… He captured his world to share with us today. In my own way, I try to capture mine. In this way, both worlds come together, bridging the gaps of time, sharing a place in the fourth dimension. Carpe Diem.”

Ongpin is recognized for his contribution to Philippine art both as a collector and a gallery owner. He was one of the founders of the first commercial art supply store in the country. He later opened his own store and art gallery. Ongpin was also self-taught in painting restoration. Some works traced back from his collection still have the inscription “Restaurado por A. Ongpin” on the reverse of canvases.

Photography

In this exhibit, Mia gives us a glimpse of another of Alfonso’s interests—photography. His grandchildren—the artist’s mother Elaine O. Herbosa, and aunts, Deanna Ongpin and Cynthia O. Valdes—remember the many self-portraits in photographs their grandfather had accumulated through the years.

And it is from this collection of autobiographical images that the young artist had selected two portraits to recreate a connection with her Lolo Poncho.

One of these shows Alfonso carrying his first-born son Luis. Both are dressed to the hilt, possibly for the infant’s baptism.

The other portrait is more intimate in scale and candid in pose. Alfonso, wearing a white hat and shirt, looks away from the lens. Curiously, Mia frames his image in an eye-shaped inner frame.

She adds a new element in these portraits—a fabric collage in the background. One may think of the crafty techniques in scrapbooks but her handling is subtle and refined, almost blending with the painted surfaces. It may be to remind one of the very personal roots of these images.

We actually see the subject—Alfonso—through his own eyes as well as through the eyes of his great-granddaughter, three generations later. These portraits are not merely copies from existing photographs but are Mia’s personal projections of a beloved ancestor.

Mia trained for 12 years in the Art Students’ League in New York. There she earned three certificates for completing full programs in painting, printmaking and sculpture, each four years long. She felt most comfortable in the League’s informal teaching approach—“where a beginner paints beside advanced colleagues.”

Her journey in art school developed a keen mastery for human subjects and their distinct personalities. The head drawings and nude paintings on exhibit show Mia’s talent to capture individual characters.

The five graphite drawings are especially engaging even with minimal details. They are not simply facial and anatomical studies. She imbues in them a state of mind and a sense of place.

Lessons from past

Mia continues to value lessons learned from the past. In this exhibit, she incorporates ideas and techniques of European artists. In her “Self-portrait at Thirty-six,” she employs the reflected image on a mirror to create an illusion of three-dimensional space, reminiscent of elements in the works of Jan van Eyck and Diego Velasquez. Unlike her earlier self-portraits, she is more candid with her image as an artist by showing herself in action and directly gazing at us. She depicts her mother, Elaine, also an artist, in a similar fashion, without the mirror but with canvases hanging and cropped in the background.

Mia also pays tribute to Dutch and Flemish masters known for their tradition of still life painting in the 17th century. Popular among private collectors, these paintings were ideal for domestic spaces. They were carefully composed to look ordinary—a disheveled fabric covering the cloth or draping diagonally from the wall, a jar or bottle lying diagonally on the table, fruits scattered or dangling at the edge.

Her still-life paintings are autobiographical, like a personal essay. It brings us viewers to ask what connections can be made. It assumes the importance of the everyday and the ordinary. Objects in each canvas were carefully chosen and composed. They may seem common things but they are her “precious necessaries” that represent a phase in the artist’s life, a season of the year, or a time of day. A pair of red shoes and a row of summer hats introduced to us her 4-year-old daughter Lana. The choice of flowers may refer to different times of the year spent in her studios in New York and in Manila.

Traditionally, still lifes were viewed in Northern Europe then as symbols of material wealth. For Mia, however, it is more of a wealth of blessings. Still life as a subject matter is also taken as a memento mori. It reminds us of our mortality and of time fleeting away. And this brings us back to the idea of carpe diem. Making the most of the opportunities, Mia captures what is before her—a life blessed with family, a career, and a past that has connected with her present.

Mia O. Herbosa’s works are on view until Jan. 12 at Alliance Française de Manille Total Gallery, 209 Nicanor Garcia St. (formerly Reposo), Bel-Air II, Makati City. Call 8957441 or 8957585 (Olivier Dintinger/Earl Parco) or 0917-890-1219 (Elaine Herbosa) or visit miaherbosa.com

The author is assistant professor at the Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, UP Diliman.

ARTMAGEDDON By Igan D’bayan

One of the best poets in the country, Marjorie Evasco, once wrote, “Water has the texture of memory.” The same with oil, in the case of New York-based artist Mia Ongpin Herbosa. Talking about new pieces in her ninth solo exhibit titled “Carpe Diem” at Alliance Française Total Gallery, she says, “I am trying to paint a memory of my life.”

Take the case of her work titled “Three Hats.” Herbosa says she was reluctant to throw away her daughter Lana’s hats, so she sat down and captured them on canvas. In this hurrying life where one moment metamorphoses into the next, the artist tries to capture each facet of her life as a mother. “My life revolves around my kid who just turned four. You could say I see the world through her eyes.”

Herbosa arrived from New York recently to spend Christmas here in the country. She says she spent the whole year painting on her own and taking care of her daughter.

“As a painter, I have changed emotionally. My works are more personal. There is more attachment. As you can see, I am using a lot of primary colors, because I’ve been reading a lot of children’s books with Lana, and it is fun to see how a child reacts to colors.”

Even in the way Herbosa plots her perspective the viewer can see how the artist’s daughter has exerted her influence. Herbosa says, “In my work titled ‘The Red Chair,’ I used flat perspective. When Lana looks at drawings in a book, she doesn’t know that figures are big because they are near and they are small when they’re far (laughs).” True, true. Kids probably think every storybook is a rehash of Gulliver’s Travels.

In Herbosa’s “The Red Chair,” the artist regards the subject with childlike wonder. It’s as if she were in her kid’s world, keeping a visual journal, mixing her oil paint to approximate the texture of memory.

“My works before were somber, now I could see something maternal in them.”

The other works in the collection have the signature Herbosa touch: strong lines and deft interplay of shadows and light.

The artist won the prestigious Edward G. McDowell Grant from the Art Student’s League of New York, and with this she traveled to all major art capitals in Europe to study the masters. Her works are in the collections of the New York Public Library and in the Museum of the City of New York. Her self-portrait (on view in her “Carpe Diem” show) titled “Life in a Still Life” was exhibited at the National Arts Club at Gramercy Park in Manhattan, New York last October. It was the third year in a row that the artist was invited to the prestigious Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, one of the oldest professional women’s art clubs in the States.

“I have finished art school, but every now and then I take up a course if there’s a teacher that I like – such as Michael Grimaldi who had a summer workshop. There is a new art school that opened in New York called the Grand Central Academy which offers courses in figurative and classical paintings. The point is to keep learning as an artist.” * * *

Herbosa’s works are on view until Jan. 12, 2007. For information, call Alliance Française de Manille at 895-7441 or 895 7585, e-mail odintinger@alliance.ph or cultural@alliance.ph, call Elaine Herbosa at 0917-8901219, or visit www.miaherbosa.com. Alliance Française Total Gallery is at 209 N. Garcia St. (formerly Reposo), Bel-Air II, Makati City.

By Amelia H.C. Ylagan

Alfonso Ongpin contemplates his newborn son, Luis. The amber of dusk falls softly on his lapel from an imagined window just over his shoulder. The soft light picks up a dab of muted vermillion from a palette of ochres and siennas, glazing a pink glow on the baby’s cheeks. In the somber silence, one can feel the meditation in eternity between father and son, as they gaze into each other’s eyes.

“Legacy” is painter Mia Ongpin Herbosa’s powerful tribute to her maternal great grandfather, Alfonso, and her grandfather, Luis. The portrait is part of her exhibition of recent works, Carpe Diem, which opens at the Alliance Française de Manille Total Gallery on December 5, 2006 and runs until January 12, 2007. This is her 9th major solo exhibition.

“I never seriously thought I would grow up to be a painter, but I did,” Mia says in her artist’s statement for the exhibit. ” Thoughts of Lolo Poncho and how he loved art as I do often fill my mind. We even share the same introspective interest inself-portraits.”

Mia has done about ten self-portraits, which include two etchings and a sculpture, in her young career. Among three major self-portraits, “Self Portrait at Thirty-One: Homage to Dürer” (2001), was bought by an insistent private collector who saw it at the framer’s as it was being prepared for the “Homage to the Masters” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in July to September 2002. “Self Portrait (Lamplight)” (2000), oil on masonite, was exhibited at the L’Arc En Ciel in Alabang, Muntinlupa and at The Drawing Room in Makati in 2004, and kept as part of the family’s collection. The third is “Life in a Still Life: Self Portrait at Thirty Six” (2006), which is one of the paintings to be seen in the Carpe Diem exhibit at the Alliance Française.

“I paint my life,” Mia says of her art and its evolution. Indeed, her style has subtly changed in the 14 years that she has been painting. Her self-portraits seem to mark the introspective self-assessments that she speaks of, as these are whispered into her consciousness by what she calls her “inner voice”. Mia’s latest paintings flash with new colors, rejoicing in her fulfillment-first, as a mother to 3-year old Lana, and second, as a recognized and multi-awarded painter who has done her Lolo Poncho proud.

After a Bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Arts, major in Fine Arts at the Ateneo de Manila University, Mia relocated to the United States in 1992 to train at the New York Art Students League. She studied portraiture and figurative painting for four years under the famous “Master of Light”, Frank Mason. It was from his exacting mentoring that she gained mastery of perhaps the most vital element that gives life to a painting - its lights and shadows, or chiaroscuro. Learning Mason’s methodical application of a grey scale to create dimension, Mia painted in uncanny likeness to the grisaille of the old masters in her early works.

Figurative exactness characterizes Mia’s mastery of her art. Her amazing deftness with skin tones and instinctive grasp of body language and facial emotion make her portraits come to life. Her four years training in sculpture and another four in etching honed her genius in form and tone as she evolved into her own style after the Mason discipline. She has won the Junius Allen Memorial Award in three categories-portrait, sculpture and etching, the Dumond Memorial Award for painting, the David Peña Award, and has consistently won the Red Dot recognition in the Art Students’ League for her paintings from 1993-2000.

Mia acknowledges her second teacher, Ronald Sherr, the portraitist of many U.S. Presidents, as the most influential in her style and technique. Critics have pointed out similarities in their choice of subjects and message, and in their style and composition, as the candid or informal are preferred to rigid poses. Encouraged by Sherr, Mia has become more experimental, unleashing her instinctive shades and exuberant color. “Aviva” (2000), a realistic portrait of an overly made up fat lady and “At the Mirror” (1997), a magnificent black female nude posed in a dance studio, were among five paintings that won and brought Mia to 27 cities in Europe on a study tour under the Edward G. McDowell Study Grant in 2002.

It is her friend Gregg Kreutz, (author of the book “Problem Solving with Oils”), who urges her to be spontaneous and to be free in her expression. Kreutz is an impressionist who paints with a flourish, finishing a piece in three hours, or at most, in two days. “I am a classical realist, and will probably never be an impressionist,” Mia says. It would take her about eight sittings to complete a portrait. (She does not work from photographs.) Then she would let it sit for a month or so, and look at it again before the final corrections and finishing touches are made. Still, Mia works well with Kreutz - she is the only painter allowed to work unsupervised in his personal studio in Manhattan. There, the much-sought North light falls perfectly on the canvas, especially between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and the colors on the palette are pure and clear.

“I am not a rebel,” Mia says of herself and her art. While she had opted to leave the Art Students’ League in 2001 to join the more unstructured Salmagundi Artists Club, Mia feels that her disciplined, academic ’90s genre will always be with her. To this day, the set-up process before painting is for her a prayerful ritual - a deliberately slowed process of cogitation and composition as the thought tableau is positioned for still life or a live model. She still meticulously lays out her palette like Mason taught her, although the ubiquitous grey scale of Mason is now replaced by a vibrant color scale of mixed yellows, reds, umbers and blues, and a lot of white to bring in the light and to accent high points. “My palette is my instrument,” she says.

And so we can almost hear music in the inner rhythm of Mia’s recent works - more vibrant with the joy of primary colors. “Perhaps it is motherhood,” she says, when asked about the bright reds in three of her paintings at the exhibit: “Red Letter Day”, “Favorite Red Shoes” and “Red Chair”. “I am painting for my daughter, who loves red, like children often do.” Is it a deliverance from the loneliness of the heart and the soul in her early years in New York, when struggling to find herself and her art?

“It can be a very lonely life, being an artist,” Mia says in her artist’s statement of her 2004 Manila exhibit. “So cerebral, so personal, one lives very much in the world of the soul, mind and heart. So internal is the struggle, conscious life goes on, many times oblivious of this other life, only to be surprised by unexpected moments of chance and serendipity.”

Beautiful Mia, beautiful soul. She has framed herself in a trompe l’oeil titled “Life in a Still Life (Self-portrait at Thirty-six)”, looking out to the world in a knowing Mona Lisa half-smile. The gilt mirror painted on the panel sees Mia looking at herself, and holds her up for the rest of us to see and applaud.

On the wall across, in yet another portrait, “In a White Hat (Lolo Poncho)”, her great-grandfather, Alfonso beams his approval. “Carpe Diem,” he says to Mia. Seize the day.