ART LEADS. Marlin Lopez, ARTlead Best Artist 2015, joins the “2016 .jpg)
Panagbenga Artshow: A Tribute to Nature” at the Baguio Museum located at Governor Road, Baguio City, from Feb. 16 to 29. He exhibits the 24-by-24-inch oil-acrylic-on-canvas The Sun, the Sea and the Wind (2016). Based on his experience as a farm owner, Marlin describes the abstract painting as “a rough strokes to a rough start of 2016 because of weather disturbance that affect rice crops in Nueva Vizcaya.”
MOOD SWINGS. Bob Dylan is not beyond going heavy metal. From folk, he switched from rock to spiritual and took on permutations in between except heavy metal, which he is doing just now in a different way.
Rockers have this natural fascination for entrances, from the predictable to the philosophical.
Ringo Starr sings of it as a tell-tale sign of love (“Waiting for your knock, dear, on my old front door/I don’t hear it, does it mean you don’t love me anymore?”). Jim Morrison made it the name his psychedelic band as an entry of perception when “cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” For Bob Dylan, they are heavy metal or iron gates as art.
Dylan held an exhibit, “Mood Swings,” of eight iron works and seven paintings that satirize popular magazine titles like Life and Archeology Today at the Halcyon Gallery in London. It ran from Jan. 16 to 25, 2016, a second edition. He did a similarly titled show in the same venue in 2013.
Rock’s poet laureate takes the literal meaning of mood swing to create ornate metaphors out of junk scrap metal that takes its meaning to a higher level. They swing that abruptly and apparently changes of mood of the given space.
For Dylan, gates are divides and dividers that mark public and private areas in a matter or moment of a swing. He defines them as free-standing and wall-hanged sculptures, demarcations of the negative space they allow.
The factually elusive storyteller writes in his autobiography, Chronicles: “(Gates) can be closed, but at the same time they allow the seasons and breezes to enter and flow. They can shut you out or shut you in. And in some ways there is no difference.”
Dylan’s childhood had been swayed by iron. Born and raised in Hibbing, largely known as the Iron Belt of Minnesota, he lived it daily. Going heavy metal is not common to him although expressed at late term.
He picks from his stock file of bits of found objects from machinery to large gears in the junkyard at his Los Angeles studio, lay them down the floor in possible arrangements, editing them for variations before welding them together.
What he comes up with are rhythmic arrangements that resonate rock, colors certain elements silvery to grab attention very much like a song’s hook. They turn into witty and whimsical interpretations of ordered chaos, reflecting the divergence of rock.
If David Bowie had passed to another dimension, Dylan is still earth-bound. What he’s up to next must be another mood swing.
COMFORT WOMAN SHOUTS OUT TO PNOY. “‘Yung tuwid na daan mo, baliku-baliko,” shouted out 85-year-old frail Narcisa Claveria of Lila Filipina at the media launch of the fourth year of One Billion Rising with Eve Ensler and Monique Wilson at Romulo Café, Makati City only to contrast with her robust determination to seek redress of her injustice.
With the theme Rise for Revolution 2016, this year’s campaign escalated the collective actions of mainly female activists worldwide, and amplify their call for systemic changes towards ending violence against women and girls once and for all.
Accompanied by Ritchie Extramadura, Lola Narcisa was among the sector representatives who participated in the forum with Joms Salvador of Gabriela, Connie Regalado of Migrante, Ka Nitz Gonzaga of Kilusang Mayo Uno, Kharlo Manalo, Zen Soriano, Rep. Emi de Jesus of Gabriela Women’s Party and Alaine Maestro of Gabriela Youth. All pointed to the government of President Aquino as the cause of their current troubles.
Eve traced the violence committed on comfort women, the women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II. And they are unable to get justice for the longest time from the Japanese government with the tacit cooperation of their own governments including the Philippines.
Asked by Buzzstation if a female president can end the violence against women, all sounded off that it will not. Lola Narcisa recalled that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo promised to help comfort women but lied big time.
But political will can accomplish the impossible as Eve pointed out. She cited the outlawing of genital mutilation by Gambia’s President ended the primitive practice against women directly as a result of the lead of One Billion Rising.
“Continue the Revolution!” Eve stressed.
LET THE RIVER REST. Ploning director Dante Nico Garcia started IsDA Revolution, a festival last year that gives the Puerto Princesa Underground River three days of rest while an International New Media Convergence was happening all over Puerto Princesa.
This year, he is set to do Let the River Rest again on July 12 but he needs to buy all the pass to the river on those dates right away before it gets booked.
Please look at his online campaign, and he hopes you will be able to figure out a way to help him or just share the link on your timeline: http://igg.me/at/nMlsVKWS7-Q.
The year culminates with a free online film made by the participants. We released the first one on Facebook and YouTube last Christmas: https://www.facebook.com/MrsRecto/posts/1071076.
He need helps to make it happen again this year. You can be part of it yourself by buying a lifetime membership card: https://www.facebook.com/IsDaRevolutionPhilippines.
Or you can be a benefactor of a young artist from remote areas of Palawan by buying from this online shop:www.facebook.com/FourEightCo.
View the short film explaining his advocacy: https://www.facebook.com/316004525205634/videos.
Dante hopes you can partner with him in raising a generation of artists dedicated in producing content that presents #BeautifulPhilippines and #PositiveValues.