Carla Mortel-Baricaua

At first, Filipino painter and interdisciplinary artist Bjorn Calleja didn’t pay much attention to NFTs. He simply saw it as a platform for digitally native art. “I felt that it belonged to the 3D artists, creative coders, digital painters and illustrators, etc.” It was his playful experimentation with animation that eventually led him to realize that tokenizing and minting his creations made sense.

Images courtesy of Metrobank Foundation, Inc.

Through her poems, she unveiled her feelings and laid bare her life’s reflections, and for years, kept them from the public’s eyes. Thanks to the cheering and goading of people close enough to appreciate her talent and musings, “Sub Rosa: The Crucifix of a Poet and other Poems” was eventually born of Maria Linda Hanihara, an award-winning creative writer, editor, lawyer, wife and devoted mother to her special child, Mina Ellen.

Photos courtesy of Anna Tungul, Menchie Vitente, and Vanessa Bautista

On September 16, eight Filipino painters and sculptors were formally recognized in a virtual awarding ceremony and exhibit opening (www.madeartdepot.ph) as awardees of the 37th Metrobank Art & Design Excellence (MADE).

Images courtesy of FB Sena Buenas Artes Group of Artists

Photos by Raphael Emmanuel V. Kalaw

Photos courtesy of Robert Besana

As the economy was put on lockdown, many workers were displaced from their posts at work. Even those in the academe were not spared from work suspensions and closures, leaving some private schools and colleges struggling to stay afloat.

For true artists, creativity doesn’t stop in quarantine. At the onset, it is a disabling situation, this pandemic and the resulting lockdowns. However, the crippling circumstance fuels artists to harness their strengths and creative juices as they work to maintain their connections to the world that still exists outside their homes. With a strong purpose, there are artists who have been throwing themselves into the fray and making sure that art and artists remain relevant even under the isolating pall of a pandemic.

Artwork images courtesy of Julius Legaspi

Artwork images courtesy of Lino Acasio

By Carla Mortel Baricaua / Artwork images courtesy of Julius Legaspi

Every generation needs a retelling of history, and this is one story in history that needs to be retold just in time for Rizal Day.

By Carla Mortel Baricaua

Images courtesy of QCinema

By Carla Mortel Baricaua

They were so familiar, common even; those everyday scenes that regularly take place around the city. From one image to another, one would wonder and try to figure out what the artist saw and captured through the lines and colors, to decipher what the artist’s artworks meant to him and to his audience. Obviously, he’s an experienced artist whose signature in katakana was a dead give away of his affinity to Japanese culture while in Manila Ukiyo-E: Hidden Beauty exhibit he declares his deep connection to the city’s simple folk and their way of living that leave him in awe every single day.

Coming from the war-torn city of Zamboanga, Marillac Tan, 23, can now be found inside a workshop, busy learning the ropes of traditional embroidery at the Escuela Taller de Filipinas Foundation, Inc. (ET) in Intramuros, Manilla.

Committed to be a wife and a mom first, she willingly put on hold her artistic journey.

HIS past works have always dealt with the harsh realities affecting children. On his tenth show, full-time visual artist Eric Guazon took a journey into his past and, as a son to his personal hero, ushered his audience into a conversation that invokes tracing back history; about the hard lessons the nation must not forget as we try to define a future that’s free from making the same mistakes.