You're Invited...

...to the art exhibit opening and book launch of CANVAS' latest children's book, Si Lupito at ang Baryo Sirkero, on July 8, 2008, 6pm at the Ayala Museum.


The winner of last year's Romeo Forbes Children's Storywriting Competition, the story was written by Rowald Almazar and brought to life through the artworks of Jose Santos III.

For a sneak peek of the story and the artworks, click here.

Plet and Thomas' Hibernation

When We Dead Wake

Poignant stories can be told in a whirl of complex imagery that can leave us stunned and speechless. Then again, they can be told in a simple way that can nonetheless leave a nameless feeling in the gut---a disturbing little twinge---which can lodge itself in our consciousness like an old, familiar memory we haven't quite forgotten.

Allan Jay Balisi's storytelling has the quality of the latter type. His stories have no characters. There is no setting, and there is no plot. All that you would see is a simple box house in the middle of an ambiguous field in vivid colors but it's enough to make you wonder: what is happening inside those windows? How many tears have fallen on what could be an earthen floor? How many smiles have lit the walls up? What words could have been and will be said?

The answer is different for each and every one of us. Each painting allows us to tell our own stories from half-forgotten, tattered memories in old places that we consider dead. In fact. the artist himself revisits Isabela, his hometown, and shares with us his sense of pathos and nostalgia through oil on canvas. He is telling us that memories cannot really truly die---they can only sleep on the surface of our consciousness waiting for the right trigger to awake.

"When We Dead Wake" opens on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 1/Of Gallery, 2nd Level, The Shops, Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Metro Manila. For more information please call 901-3152

"In Limbo" by Allan Jay Balisi (36"x48" oil on canvas, 2008).

On Plutarch and Potter

She could have been speaking to any of us.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Or you can simply read her speech or download the audio recording by clicking here.

Getting Our Bearings

It's always good to step back and see where things stand. :-)

Welcome Interruption at 1/of Gallery

"Keiye Miranda's works are either familiar or unique underwater images of people and objects that float, weave through or swim around. They deal with personal space, time, memory, thoughts and experiences. The images suggest a sense of movement, as the light on the water attempts to recapture the original form. This enables one to trace or transcend the movement of thought, and explore, for instance, the dimension of solace and solitude...

"The moving water serves as an element of defamiliarization, producing an ambiguity of the real and the unreal, thus setting new terms of encountering reality. The stark images create complex patterns, and the depiction of figures exists in the same dreamlike level of memory and time, in which it has a double image signifying the issue of identity. The shadows suggest a condition of change."

Keiye Miranda's "Welcome Interruption" opens on Tuesday, June 3, 2008, 6 p.m. at 1/OF GALLERY, 2/L The Shops at Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. For details, call 901-3152.