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NO
student of Philippine design should miss designers.,
an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.
However, please be advised to have a full breakfast or
lunch before going. The exhibit is designed to keep you
on your feet for hours reading designers notes and
asking for more. This is my only complaint with Met
exhibits. They are meant for half-day meanderings.
Marathon walk-through sessions, which opening cocktails
impose, do them no justice. Well, after a meandering
hour-and-a-half taxi ride from the Katipunan in Quezon
City to Roxas Boulevard in Manila, I finally made it to
the Met for the opening in my nondesigner clothes
slightly damp from the early May showers. Nonie
Cartagena-dono, the Met’s exhibition designer and
outreach supervisor, greeted me in his golden shawl
(Cambodian random-silk ikat, I think) and immediately
handed me a catalogue in the form of a packet of
postcards featuring the designers. May Lyn Cruz, the
education programs manager, was just a few steps behind
giving me some ice tea (Lipton, I believe). The two are
ecstatic in helping put up the Met’s fourth exhibit in
two months. This exhibit celebrates 35 years of the
Product Development and Design Center of the Philippines
(PDDCP) and features 31 designers who at one time or
another were involved with the Design Center.
SCENES FROM AN EXHIBIT.
The
ongoing designers. exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of
Manila is an exultation and exaltation of the Filipino’s
exacting and boundless creative spirit.
What is
good design? National Artist Arturo R. Luz, former
executive director of the Design Center Philippines,
puts forward a functional definition: “The objective of
design is to identify human need and then to fill those
need with the right products. Product design means
different things to different people.” This celebration
of “difference” may be called a “pluralist approach” to
designing needs. This brand of pluralism is
appropriately captured in the featured pieces of the
exhibit, ranging from mass market-oriented consumer and
industrial products (that all of us consume), middle
market-oriented crafts-based products (that some of us
consume) and high-end, one-of-a kind handmade products
(that few of us can afford to consume).
Regardless of market-orientation or niche, products
stand to gain commercially and aesthetically if
subjected to the rules of good design. As Luz
elaborates, “...to begin with, a product must be
efficient, original and competitive. It must be
well-made, safe and durable. It should be simple to make
and use. It should be easy to look at, touch and feel.
It should provide benefits to the maker, seller and
user. And it should lead to other systems and
solutions.”
These
parameters set out by National Artist Luz appear to be
more than present in the many pieces of design work
included in this exhibit. Three designers and their
respective works caught my eye. The first one is Majella
Antonia Tresvalles, a specialist in product development
and consultant in design education. Her set of fine
terra cotta-finished candle holders that can possibly
double as incense containers is an industrial design
sight to behold. The size of the pieces is just right
for the increasingly smaller homes (read: condominium
units) in Metro Manila. The perforation done in clay
are of extreme precision and the playful shapes,
essaying perhaps the shape of Easter eggs, give the
pieces a light air bordering naïve art...true to the
substance of clay and effortless in the execution of
form. I can imagine this set transforming the ambiance
of rooms as it casts shadows and project dots of light
on walls and ceilings. Tresvalles has just made candle
light safe and kinetically exciting.
Another
design of note is that of Emmanuel Delingon Jr., a
specialist in product, space and package design, visual
merchandising and design management. Delingon’s pristine
white-ceramic decanters—and again I say that these
pieces might double as Ikenobo-ryu ikebana vases (or, is
it the other way around)—are on a league of their own.
In this design, function seamlessly merges with
aesthetics, and I dare say that, in this case, function
is the aesthetics. The vessels’ bodies give way to
handles. Houseware has never been so poetic or
sculptural. National Artist Luz has an explanation for
this type of process of creating design. “It can be
through clarity of intention and execution. Focus on the
heart of the problem, look for clear and direct
solutions, and avoid all nonessentials. Final solutions
tend to be the simplest and the most obvious.” To me,
Delingon’s design is perfect in its simplicity and
approach toward functionality. His boldness in using
white, a color that reveals uncertainty in form among
unsure designers, and asymmetry, makes his work rather
refreshing and sets him apart from the many other good
designers in the exhibit.
I could
imagine the anguish many designers go through in order
to create a design of their liking and one that can pass
their own standards of excellence. Countless sheets of
sketches must have been produced, crumpled and thrown
away. Countless prototypes must have been made and then
only to be destroyed. Peter Carl Fabergé, jeweller to
the court of Tsar Alexander III of the Russian Romanov
dynasty and one of the best jewellers of all time, is
known to have subjected pieces of jewelry that did not
pass his standards, to the destructive force of the gem
cutter’s mallet. Indeed, no shoddy work ever bore his
name. This discipline and this rigor in maintaining
excellence is most succinctly explained by National
Artist Luz: “To design well you must think and work hard
and be willing to destroy, reject, and then start over
and over again until all possibilities have been
exhausted...After you think you have found the solution,
be prepared to reexamine, question, compare, revise and
rework until you can no longer add or remove anything
from the design of your product. By then you will
probably be exhausted. But you will also experience the
satisfaction that accompanies the act of creation.”
With
National Artist Luz’s words in mind, I wonder how many
pieces of work Maria Rita Badilla-Gudiño, of the College
of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines
Diliman, has destroyed for the sake of achieving and
maintaining excellence. Badilla-Gudiño specializes in
sculptural and functional ceramics. Pottery is not a
medium for the impatient and the faint-hearted, for one
does not really know what one has created until opening
the kiln. Badilla-Gudiño is very impressive in her
ability to evoke the sensuous shapes of nature. Organic
shapes of shell, coral and fruit inhabit the corpus of
her work. Her unorthodox installation of ceramic wall
lamps has attracted many exhibit-goers to linger in her
section. In one piece in the shape of a coconut,
Badilla-Gudiño shows unparalleled technique in
portraying husk fiber in clay. This most unique, ceramic
texture goes very well with the pale-celadon glaze that
she favors in many of her works. I believe that
Badilla-Gudiño’s style of design will someday constitute
one major branch of Philippine ceramic design.
So, what
happens after a successful design is achieved?
Apparently, more challenges...as National Artist Luz
notes: “You move on to the next design problem and start
all over again. Is it worth it? The answer is yes. Is
it difficult and challenging? Certainly. That is what
makes design a rewarding experience.”
Sounds
like writing, does it not?
The
participating designers are: Mark Victor Bautista,
Redemptor Bitantes, Bettina Bonoan, Patrocino Catuncan,
Dante Cruz, Manuel Dacanay Jr., Marian Dacanay, Josefina
de Laza, Eduardo Delena Jr., Arturo Delgado Jr.,
Emmanuel Delingon Jr., Vina Domingo, Joel Enriquez,
Olivia Loyola-Enriquez, Maria Rita Badilla-Gudiño, Luis
Manalang, Oscar Mapua, Benjamín Sixto Molina Jr., Petite
Brodett-Olbes, Ramon Pabillon, Valeriano Padilla,
Zenaida Zagala-Pineda, Rowe Requejo, Maria Felicitas
Reyes, Celino B. Santiago, Ana Ma. Verónica Solano, Rey
Soliven, Grace Enriquez-Sy, Majilla Antonia Tresvalles
and Vanesa Umali.
The
exhibit is ongoing until August 23. For more
information, call 536-1566 or 523-7855. |
