Manor Farm

this is supposed to be the heavy burden of the yoke of capitalism. The animals of animal farm are again disillussioned by the change of leadership as they find out that the pigs of animal farm resemble their former human master. It meant death for boxer, the horse, and oppression for the rest.

new graphics done...

... new layouts i did for friends...
http://tinaslittlecorner.multiply.com
http://manjugagoomal.multiply.com
and for lovina.....

static and silence

here's a little digital artwork i did for the sunday's monochrome song... It's so wonderful!

ts 4 in the morning july in 69
Me and my sister
We crept down like shadows
Theyre bringing the moon right down to our sitting room
Static and silence and a monochrome vision

Theyre dancing around
Slow puppets silver ground
And the world is watching with joy
We hear a voice from above and its history
And we stayed awake all night

And something is said and the whole room laughs aloud
Me and my sister
Looking on like shadows
The end of an age as we watched them walk in a glow
Lost in space, but I dont know where it is

Theyre dancing around
Slow puppets silver ground
And the stars and stripes in the sand
We hear a voice from above and its history
And we stayed awake all night

Theyre dancing around
It sends a shiver down my spine
And I run to look in the sky and
I half expect to hear them asking to come down
(oh) will they fly or will they fall?
To be excited by a long late night

popsicle toes in css

I was very happy with the out come of the css project i had for a friend, I found it really cute, and i'm glad she liked it a lot too... I hope her husband approves... He's a tough one to please! hahahaah.

here's my temp layout site for her...

http://poptoestry.multiply.com/css-on

Animal Farm

I was inspired by George Orwell's classic tale of greed and corruption. This is my rendition of "animalism" . It is a collage of the promises of animal farm's utopia. A life of plenty and warmth for animals of manor farm.

I colored the collage using the philippine flag's colors to incorporate it in the philippine setting.This for me is reminiscent of the utopia most politicians promise before elections to the masses. The masses still hope for the future, even if sometimes, as the book reveals, people topple down tyrants and replace governments, leaders are corrupted by absolute power just the same and we are doomed to live the same system, even if we get different leaders. It is a sad reminder that we forget our history and we are always doomed to repeat it.

new website!

...i'm blushing with pride. this is my new site after a loooooooooooooooong time. I feel like this is my first one true website evah.

http://www.farmandkitchen.com

hope we make it big!

Our asia : Have we met exhibit

...Hi guys, wanted to share you a link:

http://www.ourasia.tv/index.php/philippines/
art_travel/have_we_met/



just got featured!

single serve friends favorites

My single serve friends series (my favorites)....

Reena

I've always known reena in between marriages. The first time i met her at chat, she was using samar's account. And we hit it off suddenly. She's like a sister that i never knew. One thing i did love about her is that she's still open to get married again even if hers ended in a sour note. A few years ago, i heard she was again engaged.... but it didn't last either. She must have been devastated to be be disappointed the second time around.

I made the painting sad. I guess, i see myself in it too, with all my disappointments and apprehensions about relationships.... Always contemplating, trying to make sense out of things, where i went wrong among others....

There is a thousand more words to describe the feelings i have for reena, But for me, at this time, I feel words are inadequate and have a tendency to make it more shallow and cheesy so i have decided to deliver them in her picture.

I hope you like it as much as I loved doing it.

I hope reena be granted the love she deserves, wherever she maybe.

single serving friends

Single serve friends

.. I’ve been a chatter since 2001. I got inspired by the thought of the idea of people that you meet for a certain time online, then, not being able to keep intouch with them again (hence the term, single serve). Although they send you pics, sex, location, age, and other snippets of information, they remain your friends only for that period you came online. Maybe it’s the culture of single servings that we’ve got accustomed to , like shampoo sachets, single serve milk, and other disposables. We’ve also kept it with the way we meet people nowadays…. So for the thousands I’ve talked to online, here’s something for all of you…

Tonite

12:10 midnite. Can’t sleep. Drank too much coffee in the afternoon. I feel like I want to split my body into three parts… one to type this blog, one to run my other errands and another to paint on my handmade quilts. I am surprised that I’m still stressed even after leaving the corporate world.

My dog sighs. He’s sleeping cozily over layers of pillows. He’s named after my favorite chatmate that I’m still terribly attracted after 6 years. I thought I was done with him. But my feelings are getting another rollercoaster ride when all the feelings I’ve buried begun to resurface when I painted his portrait for my show. I must be fucking insane to even think to be in love with this guy. I mean, I haven’t even met him!!!! Now I know why Matt, the husband of Jemy (inspirational online romance couple) was thought of his neighbors as crazy when he starts telling them that he’s visiting the Philippines to meet jemy. Fucking insane.

I hate the feeling of needing. I get like this a month before a show comes. When the stress levels are up, you need to produce brilliant ideas and you are reminded of how fragile your sanity is when a certain chatmate of yours cuts you in your mid sentence to say goodbye, when all you want to do is, plead for him to stay awhile longer, humor you a bit, and at least alleviate your loneliness for a few minutes.

I was crying while painting his portrait. One of my friends knew… just one look at the painting, even if the portrait was smiling, it was still sad. And it’s true. I was crying while doing it. For the lack of understanding of what has happened. For the loss, and for the feelings that are resurrecting, that I should have had control over.

Sigh. I find no resolution in my problems.

I weep for myself tonight, but kiss my online chatmate’s forehead in the air, wishing him that he find relief from the emptiness we both carry inside.

deepestthoughts

Have we met?

by Margaret Rodriguez

As technology and societies develop, cultures expand and change. One remarkable change happening right now, is how technology has altered the concept of meeting people. Our world has gotten smaller when the we sent letters via the post office , and the future took another leap when the telephone was invented. Now we have the cellphone, computers and internet. Traditionally, people met face to face to transact business, talk and fix alliances, woo and fall in love but as our options broaden by means of communication, how can we say that we’ve really met someone?

The exhibit tries to examine the nuances of the two schools of thought of meeting people: Meeting people face to face , and exploring the interaction between individuals using tools, take for example : through the mediation of the internet.

As an avid user of the internet Margaret Rodriguez delves into the medium of cyberspace as the virtual world that draws people of the same interest together, and also keeps them apart. She explores how much the internet has redefined communication and values, and people are now moving towards the abstract than the material and how computers can sometimes make a person more subtle, intuitive, expressive, creative that would have been harder to reveal in a face to face contact. She reveals these ideas by making collage portraits of the people she has known and interacted with in the internet.

She has chosen to work with textiles and handmade items to show a sense of attachment to the materials and techniques employed. This is in reaction to the proliferation of technology as she wants to portray the intimacy of relationships despite the use of synthetic tools like cellphones, computers and cable television.

Deepest thoughts

2001. Found my online soulmate. This is a representation of what i know of him. Making this painting took a lot from me,and it’s both happy and sad. I have yet to meet him. But i know it will never be the same, like the summer of 2001.

From Red Bubble site

Just joined red bubble, an aussie site, similar to multiply and flickr.... Looks fun!
here's some flash stuff i got from the site... Enjoy!

(patterns: again)

….Patterns are indigenous to daily life like maps, patterns guide our habits, and movements, and inner clockwork, defining our personalities as they endlessly repeat and overlap….

-Graphic Design MFA Maryland Institute of Art

The Maryland Institute of Art basically summed up the gist of my exhibit where I tried to fuse Asian textile design to contemporary colors. One year ago, when I first decided to mount this exhibit, I was trying to look for a way to show my love for Indian and indonesian textiles, as well as Pacita Abad’s trapunta art. After much research, swatches and books, I thought to myself, I’ll just paint, and be open to be surprised. Sure enough I started with the long canvasses, and named them “pathways”, I literally felt as if I was –paving my way into myself, through every nook and cranny, and breezing through colors. I purposely studded my paintings with little patterns of traingles, circles and lines, reminiscent of the small things I do all the time, and how much I love to be a packrat. I love the texture of small details, like when you look at an ivory carving or miniatures. Soon enough, I was already finishing my pieces. Looking at the artworks, I could recount the small joys of the day, the ebb and the flow of the tide, the rise and setting of the sun as well as the fibonacci count of nature. I just wish I could share with you as much joy as I had painting my artworks.

things to be thanked about.......

I got inspired about reading comments from blindsided about “prosperity that matters”.

It’s very hard to see my life in a macrocosmic view before, when I was still so busy in my former work. Now that I left it, not only was I able to find a different perspective of life, but also my face cleared up of my acne, and then I thought before that I needed medicines and a whole lot of trouble to save my skin. Little did I know it was just the stress (fear of not doing good, late nights and sunday work) , not the food, not the boys, or my genes.

I’m painting now, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s my husband. It’s my first love. I sometimes forget to eat not like when I was still working in advertising where stress really churns up acid in your stomach. I’m, not surprised that a lot of agency, production people and post production people are fat, drink too much, or suffer from ulcers. I don’t know why even if I work longer hours in painting, I don’t get the queasiness I usually get from advertising.

Life is much more simple now, there’s more time to live the kind of life that busy people often only resolve to live, more time to relish on afternoons of manila bay, more time to talking to friends, more time to read my books that I’ve put off as long as I could remember, more time to commit on endeavors that really have meaning in my life, more time to enjoy mc do french fries and savor the calamares of the street vendors, more time to erase the bad memories and the psyche that you’re not good enough, not desirable enough, not rich enough when you’re pitted in dog eat dog world.

I thank god I haven’t been swallowed by the system just yet. Preserve some of the idealism and innocence of people I have lost while working in a culture of two-faces, stabbing backs and egocentric bosses .I thank god also, for having met under difficult circumstances, people who are truly friends. The last quarter of 2007 was truly a revelation to me.

Yesterday, I saw my ex with a brand new girlfriend, walking hand in hand in cubao. Maybe she still doesn’t know she has other girlfriends in different places, that he wheedles money through pity and coercion, or that he is prone to violence. I was tempted to warn off the girl, when gino my good friend called to pick me up at another side of shopwise. While I was reminded of my sad fate 2 years ago with my ex, I was happy that everything was over.

There’s really too much to thank about. Thank god for that.

omens

Do you believe in omens?

I was painting upstairs when i heard a loud crash emanating from the kitchens. One of our oldest plates broke into pieces from the hands of my mother. Was it a bad omen? a preview of things to come? I was never a believer of those, and shrugged off what had happened.

It was in the morning that the call came.

Lita, a household helper from one of my father's cousins, who goes to my grand aunt's house to clean during weekends discovered the demise of lola rosa. She phoned us quickly, and my dad and I quickly dropped by to survey the situation and to broadcast the news to all the relatives.

It was my first time to see a freshly dead body, and of someone I knew so well. My grand aunt was still sitting in her favorite spot in her simple dining table, still with her mouth wide open, her body hard and cold. There was remnants of her piss on the floor, which lita wiped after the funeral boys took my aunt to the funeral home. My grand aunt, lola elong was like a broken record when we found her. She had been complaining all night that she couldn't call our house, complained why lola rosa was the one taken, instead of her and how lola rosa choked, vomited before passing away. They have been together for more than 9 decades, in the same old house. Now she was all alone.

It was a common consensus that my lola elong, alone during that night, might have been rattled, with poor eyesight, could not call us though the phone and find help. Maybe there could have been something that could have been done....

Faced with death, I'm still numb from the experience. Early as now, i'm trying to think of how life will be when my parents will be older. Will they be staying with me? Is it going to be like how lola elong and lola rosa lived? The two of them having petty fights everyday and actually look forward to the arguments? Who'll go first? Mom or Dad? Or maybe me?

In the midst of all my thoughts, my mother draws me to the corner...

"Sabi ko na nga ba, baka yung basag na plato yung warning sa atin". ( I had a feeling the broken plate was an omen).

I personally don't believe it, but... what a strange coincidence.........

Happiness in a dual core format

...Finally,having spent months grueling over my limping pentium 3 computer, my brother convinced my dad to buy a new computer ( I know I'm in an age where I'm supposed to be living in my own flat and buying my own pc...hehehe)... For me, this is only temporary... And should get back on track after I land a job (or sell all my paintings).

Anyway, yesterday I bought a new pc... yay! Finally! 2 gigs of ram, a dual core processor and a nvidia graphics card to finally get my old 3d stuff up and running. We still have the old monitor, but I'm not complaining. As long as the work gets done efficiently,saves when it supposed to save and not hang while your saving... AND HAVE TO REBOOT EVERY TEN MINUTES.

I am so happy ( okay... okay... almost... If the pldt guys just deliver what they promise ...which is 1mbps rather than 40kbps of dsl bandwidth everything would have been so swell) at least I've uploaded my stuff in multiply and flickr.

Now, I'm terribly thinking about freelancing instead of getting a real job (8-5 kind). And brush upon my 3d,flash skills... *hay... choices....

the 2x2 stuff

After doing the long planks, i was excited to make artworks with a square size. I've been inspired by lin xiping's pallete (mid tones- to highlights), although, in my case, I still can't get out of needing to have full contrast in my work and a clean monotone feel. ... Still, I'm so happy for the final outcome.

Patterns : Metaphors of Life

I've always been fascinated by patterns. When i first borrowed my father's camera in college, the first thing i would shoot are the trellis, the spiked gate tops, the ebb and flow of the tide that form the tiny sand dunes in the beach. In the same way nature follows a pattern, our lives are also governed by our natural instincts. We develop habits and daily rhythms.

I was so excited to find out about artists and artworks that pertained to patterns. I used to love van gogh (well, i still do)... his rhythmic strokes became a pattern in itself. I especially loved pacita abad with her bold colors and wild imagination. I simply had to paint after i had been showed the way.

I started with long canvasses, and the design and colors just flowed... Soon, I was on the next canvas. Nothing is as satisfying as finally finding yourself in the work that you love. I hope fate will help me continue on with my craft amidst all uncertainty.

Finally Here

Daniel Tayona finally convinced me to put up a blog about art ... So here i am... I usually put up my artworks in multiply (forever pics and videos yay!) and friendster. But I usually miss out saying stuff about my art when I post it multiply.

Now that i think about it, Daniel's really lucky that he has stories to begin with when he does his paintings and drawings. I simply draw or paint by impulse.... and look at it after awhile...and build from there.

People think sometimes it's easy to paint when they see a finished product most especially with abstract paintings. Some, disdainful by the amount some pieces can be sold with so called "minimal" efforts. It's really too tiring to explain the processes and the effort that comes to building an artwork. We artists need to live, pay rent, pay the carpenters, buy expensive art supplies, produce an exhibit and contend with naysayers! I hope people can get educated by how much money, time and thought goes in producing an artwork and not just raise a brow and ask... really? that much for a bunch of globs of paint?

....Hay ... Mahirap talaga mabuhay. Anyway, I have more pics in the meanwhile here:

http://xairoise.multiply.com