Lifestyle

Since the pandemic, seemingly perennial norms have become variable. The only surfacing constant was art and the need for healing.The Island Special “All in Good Time: Through the Lens of Dumaguete Artist Hersley Ven Casero” capped the year-long V-CON 2 webinar series. The speaker was supported by moderator Onna Rhea Quizo and ExCon Director Mariano Montelibano.Multidisciplinary artist Hersley Ven Casero was on a roll pre-pandemic. His 2008 laughing boy photo, “The Sound of Laughter,” was the focal point of the global art initiative “Ha?: The Laughing Boy Project.”This initiative was launched in 2012, when Casero’s iconic photo had a brush with false claims by a Filipino food artist on national TV. Despite friends suggesting legal action against the said artist, optimistic Caser...

The latest offering of the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition & Conference (VIVA ExCon) 16 in its year-long Virtual Conference 2 is ’Museum Management Projections after the Pandemic with moderator Maria Rosario “Rica” Estrada, head of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Visual Arts and Museum Division (CCP VAMD). Resource persons are June Yap of the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and Nikita Yingqian Cai of Times Museum.June Yap shared that SAM which opened in 1996 is the first art museum in Singapore and it underwent a change in organizational structure in 2013.From April 2020 to the present, measures were put in place to deal with the limitations of the pandemic. Their experience with "They Do Not Understand Each Other" exhibition for Art Basel Hongkong is that it took...

Art typically rises in visual forms and physical spaces, but in the dappled dusk of tactility and material sites, there is daylight on thoughts, processes, and performative notions.The V-CON 2 webinar "Kalibutan Seminar Node 4: Exhibitions | Not Exhibitions - Timing and Placing the Present" with Kalibutan Head Curator Patrick Flores and Visayan curators Guenivere Decena and Liby Limoso of Region 6, Maria Taniguchi and Jay Jore of Region 7, and Mars Briones and Nomar Miano of Region 8 was the fifteenth in a series of virtual talks.The speakers were supported by ExCon Director Mariano Montelibano and prior to the session, Jore offered a prayer for the late Leo Abaya, one of the featured artists of Kalibutan.Kalibutan speaks to the idea of the world and consciousness. This concept...

A 69-year-old Bacolod sports buff was hit with severe COVID-19 and for three days could not see the sun although his hospital bed was next to a window.Art Puentevella, former Bacolod City government sports director and a diabetic, who recently spoke about his near death experience in March, said he was very weak.“I was unaware of what was happening to me in my first three days in the hospital, everything was dark. I am lucky I even made it to the hospital”, Art said.His wife, Elizabeth, said Art had lost his appetite and had not been eating for two days so when he was rushed to the hospital he was very weak.Art’s oxygen saturation level was 58 when he was first admitted and his doctor said he would have to be intubated.Elizabeth said a classmate of Art sent her Ivermect...

Upon the onset of this pandemic, the artist’s faculty was in a jarring state of novelty and isolation. Veering away from conventional setups and the usual hubbub, he finds refuge in the hushed walls of a home, in the company of coffee, and the warmth of family. The webinar “Lockdown Art” with Mark Salvatus was the fourteenth session of V-Con 2. The speaker was supported by moderator Vincent Rose Sarnate and ExCon Director Mariano Montelibano.Sarnate highlighted how the art community grappled with forms of confinement. It has been nearly 450 days since the national lockdown and artists have employed as much, or even more ways to thrive despite bounds. Art that demands physical spaces, mobility, and mass interaction gradually migrated to virtual platforms with an even d...

A strong offering of the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition & Conference (VIVA ExCon 16) Virtual Conference 2 is the island specials, this one featured Negros Occidental.It was moderated by Negros Occidental Island Coordinator Moreen Austria who tapped young artists Brandon Braza and Bea Dolloso.Austria aims to empower art practices by highlighting its profound effects on the younger generation. She expressed her willingness to help and support other artists and emphasized that art has no retirement age and Art District has evolved into a school of life for artists.Brandon Braza shared that he had stayed committed to the arts ever since he was young, way back when he was starting with calligraphy. He found the community in Bacolod to be very welcoming and said that he f...

Sixteen Ilog beauties staged a virtual Santacruzan at Hacienda Vargas in Cauayan, Negros Occidental, on May 26, Ilog Councilor Mark Vargas said Thursday, June 10.The virtual Santacruzan featured tourist spots of Ilog, to promote local tourism, he said.The beauties also did charity work by delivering food assistance to the poorest of the poor affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ilog barangays, he added.They also gave food assistance to the inmates of the Ilog Municipal Jail and abused children under the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Vargas said.The beauties in their Virtual Grand Santacruzan walked in the middle of sugar land wearing Filipiniana gowns made by fashion designers Steve Genzola and Bon Ryan Gonzales from Ilog, Edwin Benitez,Leonard G...

"Claustrophobia" is a group exhibition by four young artists from Talisay City Karl Arnaiz, Miles Floreza, Dennis Occeña, and Paul Occeña. Some people believe that opposite attracts, however, a maxim says, “like poles attract each other.”The artists have known each other since childhood growing up as friends. They may have taken different paths but they gravitate back to each other in their art practice.They shared that "not until that one event in our Barangay, the poster-making competition led us to this point, i.e., after that, we established a strong connection. Perhaps, time just comes in the life of a person when he encounters someone and without knowing it, something different occurs. We can say that the main reason why our group was built is certainly not because of the ine...

Silay City Mayor Mark Andrew Arthur Golez married his girlfriend of 16 years at the Virgen Sang Barangay Chapel at Sta. Clara Subdivision in Bacolod City, Wednesday, May 16.Bacolod Bishop Patricio Buzon officiated the wedding of Golez, 51, to Anna Maria Fe Piccio Azcona, a dialysis nurse who worked in Long Island in New York State, USA.The mayor said he proposed to her on her birthday on a bridge in New York’s Central Park on Aug. 5, 2019.“I chose a bridge without water beneath it so if she rejected me and threw the ring away I could still pick it up,” the mayor joked.They were supposed to get married last year but it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.His wife retired and came home in November 2020 so they were able to plan their wedding, Golez said.He m...