The flower, the wave, the art

We shall die talking in Chinese. – Willie Arsena 

The opening quote from maskmaker Willie Arsena is culled from the short story “Writers” by Cesar Ruiz Aquino, who in turn thought up this week’s column title as he lobbied for a write-up on three kababayan artists who have made their mark in the art scene, fellow Zamboanguenos Isidro Floreta, Edwin Jumalon, and Arsena. Initially there was a suggestion that this could start a series on Probinsyart, or how art goes far away from Manila, where it continues to make inroads to the subconscious. That’s right, Jung or no Jung, and even if Freud is dead.

Let’s see now, it would be unfair to Floreta if we comment on any of his work, since the first and last we saw of his paintings — Madonna and child variations, subdued vintas, kite flyers and a few faceless figures — was a couple of decades ago during a field trip to the Madrigal Center in Ayala Alabang where he had a joint show with Arsena titled “Dos de Zamboanga.”

It was a spur of the moment trip, Cesar Ruiz dropping by the apartment on Vito Cruz the year the eldest child was born, and we took a fast car headed south late in the afternoon for Alabang and always a Madrigal. Arsena was not around, but Floreta, several years younger than the senior artist, was, and so consented to some small talk that passed for an interview and material for an art review at the time.

During a visit to Dumaguete at Cesar’s digs in Taclobo, he had shown me a book he had inscribed for Floreta, his own, which had something to do with the memory and scent of flowers. Though I had not noticed it, there must have been an exchange gift from the young painter (though now maybe not so young, 20 years passing by in an eye blink) for the older writer in his Dumaguete studio, which would make for a good conversation piece while downing shots of Benmore after lunch. At the Madrigal center, most likely since shuttered, Floreta’s pieces were going for as low as P500. But that was when life and currency were simpler.

I had not met Arsena at the Dos de Zamboanga, but eventually made his acquaintance and even had a few beers with him in Dumaguete when he was staying with Cesar on a visit from the hometown, the two Chavacanos reunited for some Negros style bohemia. And as with his work in Alabang, Arsena’s concentration was on masks, one of which he saw fit to hand over to me for a prompt minibus ride further down south to Siaton town, where to this day it hangs on the lanai wall of the in-laws’ house staring at the elements and waiting for the call of Don Antoy at dusk.

We had beers at an unassuming ihaw-ihaw along Alfonso Trece, long before it was renamed Governor Perdices Avenue, but which for some reason Cesar insists on calling Carlos Trece, he must have got his streets and brandies mixed up. It’s farfetched that we adjourned to a Thai massage parlor after the beer session, because that form of rejuvenation center had not yet sprouted like mushrooms after storm in Dumaguete, but a few lichens in the boulevard, if ingested, might inspire our own real-life facial expressions to acquire the mien of an Arsena mask, like Don Juan with a peyote way of knowledge.

As for Jumalon, we must admit that the name rings more than just a bell, in fact more like the pre-recorded elaborate jingle of a brand-name ice cream man just around the corner. Because before the 13 Artists awardee Winner Jumalon, there’s his father Edwin who’s closer to the generation of maybe Floreta. Some months ago Jumalon the elder had a show at the Nineveh art space in Sta. Cruz, Laguna, before the capital town was inundated by floods, the subject having to do with scarecrows and childhood.

There’s a painting of a girl swinging on the arm of a scarecrow, her face resembling that of the artist’s daughter, perhaps Amihan. There’s a boy in Superman costume befriending the scarecrow, as if they are about to form their own dynamic duo: could this be the young Winner?

A write-up on the show noted the absence of any grown-up or authority figure in the paintings, except maybe for the scarecrow, a hollow man, necessary to keep the intruders away from childhood’s idyll.

Aside from the scarecrow series, Jumalon the elder has also done a series of nudes, whose variations capture well the shape and musk of the fairer sex. Again it’s hard to comment on work seen only as Jpeg attachment, but you get the idea.

The whole family are painters, I’m told, from Edwin the father, to Winner the son, to Amihan and another daughter. Painting of the Zamboanga they know, of the south we never knew.

Which made us recall the day we wandered into the gallery of the 13 Artists before the show packed up, and at the far end of the hall was Winner’s hand-painted house transplanted from the Chavacano imagination. It was neither Frida Kahlo’s blue house nor John Mellencamp’s pink one, but doubtless had a character of its own.

It was the wave of the Jumalons, the art of maskman Willie and the flower of Isidro no longer a young man blossoming forth, straight out of Unreal Street by the Plaza del Pilar of memory.