SM Mall of Asia X Secret Fresh Gallery

Last Thursday, I got an email invite from SM MOA to check out their graffiti art exhibit in collaboration with Secret Fresh Gallery happening on May 9. The exhibit  featuring works of Christian Tamondong, Egg Fiasco and JJ Zamoranos was launched at the North Entertainment Mall and I had the chance to squiggle out of the office for a while (thanks to my awesome boss!) to take photos and talk to the organizers of the event. 

This exhibit is an effort by SM to showcase graffiti as an art form. They've started it in SM North EDSA Skywalk with Dee Jae Paeste, and it makes me so happy that they're doing it again with 3 of the most talented graffiti artists in the Philippines. I think it's a pretty awesome move from SM because they have the space and the resources to really show the works of these artists to mall goers. Graffiti has always had a bad rap with the average onlooker since it's almost always synonymous to vandalism, but to the artists, it's simply a form of self expression, defying limits and getting out of the comfort zone using the urban landscape. There is a thin line between vandalism and street art as anyone can get a can of spray paint, draw a few faces and a couple of cuss words and say it's self expression but you know good art when you see one, I guess, and hell I've seen them at work last Friday!

Egg Fiasco and his signature monkey biz

 

Christian Tamondong and what I assume is a bunny rabbit (but I don't want to jump into conclusions)

JJ Zamoranos and his cutie creature

Dear Ice Cream, Y U SO COOL?!

What a dork.

The exhibit also showed toy sculptures from the Secret Fresh gallery at the North Mall's ground floor pocket garden. These were carved from wood and painted with acrylic. The artists painted these themselves based on their own design. I met Angelo, a tattoo artist. He showed me his box boy tattoo by Christian Tamondong. He got it two years ago! 

With Dennis and Big Boy of Secret Fresh Gallery

 According to Big Boy of Secret Fresh, the preparation for the launch only took them two weeks. They've managed to bring the artists together and pull off the exhibit in that short amount of time. The two murals located on each side of the pocket garden was done by the three artists within 2 hours! It blows my mind. It takes me almost the whole day to paint on paper! Talking to Dennis and Big Boy, I could feel that there's so much enthusiasm and passion about street art and vinyl toy collecting. Secret Fresh believes in their artists regardless of background or credentials and provide opportunities for emerging ones to break into the scene. The whole scene though is all about community, collaboration, support and respect for each other's work.

There is something about street art that will always amaze and capture me. The scale of the paintings, the medium, the ideas behind the images being made; most importantly, it's the fact that it's never snooty or intimidating. I love that I can walk up to a painting, touch it one day and return to the same place and see a different painting on another. It's really a win-win situation. This partnership ensures that artists will have the space that they need to show their work,  SM MOA won't have to worry about boring white walls again. Hopefully, this collaboration between Secret Fresh and SM Mall of Asia is only the first of many. 

The Secret Fresh Art Exhibit runs until May 31, 2014
Artists:
Egg Fiasco
Christian Tamondong
JJ Zamoranos

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Bright Minds Ph X Fayeshka

A new creative space for kids and adults just opened this March in Taguig and I'm really excited to share this collaboration with you. See, I've been doing regular art sessions with my niece and cousins, teaching them some calligraphy, rubber stamping and watercolor techniques at cafes around BF, and so when my good friend Felice called me one morning and asked if I was willing to teach kids arts and crafts, I instantly said yes.

Bright Minds is the brainchild of Felice's sister, Chrissie Capicoy who is a dentist by profession. She noticed that a number of her patients have cleft lips and cleft palates, so she came up with the idea to also offer Speech Therapy to children. Aside from helping kids reach their full potential with language and communication, they also offer crafts sessions to open their minds to the creative process and simply have fun with art. With the current trend of children simply relying on gadgets and technology to pass the time, Bright Minds also aims to reintroduce the youth to the handcrafting movement. 

Bright Minds creative space

The Bright Minds Team consists of certified speech language pathologists and artists with backgrounds in fashion, fine arts and language. Bright Minds also offers French and Spanish classes and tied up with The Alliance Française de Manille and Instituto Cervantes respectively.  

Kids hard at work on their rubber stamps

I am very honored to be a part of this team of creative individuals who teach and encourage kids be more creative. For the past several weeks since Bright Minds has opened, I've been teaching rubber stamping techniques and basic drawing to kids every Saturday and it's been a really amazing and rewarding experience. We are also offering other craft projects such as silk screening, paper flowers and garland making, watercolor techniques as well as ceramic painting!

Ashley and her flower and bee stamp

Marjorie, proud of her name stamp (and by gosh, what detail!)

Bright Minds Speech Clinic and Creative Center is located at:

Unit 201 McKinley Park Residences
31st St. corner 3rd Ave.,
Bonifacio Global City, Taguig
brightmindsph@gmail.com
Tel: +63 2 625-4748
Mobile: +63 916 547 6870

For more information about Bright Minds Speech Clinic and Creative Center, visit their official website

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Project Condo: A Dining Set, Paper Flowers and Table Styling

Month of April has brought some great progress to my living conditions at the condo. In my last Project Condo post, I was sharing some of the things I learned during my first couple of weeks at my unit. I ended up not buying the furniture that I enumerated in this post because of budget constraints, and so I took a different approach to purchasing big functional pieces and decorating my home. 

I recently bought a sturdy 2-seater dining set made of malaysian rubber wood and it has been my place for work and eating. I love that it's made of dark wood, although I am contemplating on having it painted in white. The table is square, sized 30x30 inches and I've been looking for one exactly like it. I knew my space could not afford fitting a bigger table, so I jumped at the opportunity to buy this set.  I still plan to add a couple of eames-inspired DSW chairs so that I can use them as accent chairs to this rather dull set up, but I tried to look for them at Mandaue foam, Dimensione and Dwell and they were out of stock. Oh well, in time. :)

Lately, I've been channeling some of my creative juices with styling my new dining area. I chanced upon a utility scale placemat from the Bleach Store in Greenbelt 5 and bought it immediately. Then made a bunch of paper flowers to add some color and softness to the table. Since I haven't done my plant/flower shopping from my mother's garden yet, I made these paper flowers using yellow, black and white crepe paper. 

Because of the placemat, the table had a sort of industrial vibe to it and the grey background and yellow flowers juxtapose themselves against the dark wood. 

With the end of April came in the start of a brand new month, and I suddenly felt tired of the table setting above. It seemed too dark and too warm, so I made another bunch of flowers with greens, violets and blues. For the blue flower, I used white crepe paper and colored its edges with watercolor. Oh the thrill of the blue bleeding into white sent my heart giggling! I changed my gray placemat with a white and black kitchen towel which served the same placemat purpose on my table and it gave a sort of shabby chic feel to the whole setting.

What do you think about these two themes? Are you into the whole industrial movement, or are you more of a shabby chic kind? :)

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