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Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Davao express
By Ritchie Landis Doner Quijano
Beautiful can be said of a place where art flourishes because aside from the historical, religious and cultural events the place commemorates, its social and night life and eco-tourism spots, art as well gives life to the environment and offers an alternative to everything that is mundane. In life, it is said that without art, what's the point?
Beautiful can be said as well of Davao, that city far south in Mindanao, where midnight is regarded as past one's bedtime. One reason why cultural travelers and art lovers both local and foreign are exploring the place is its thriving art population.
The Ford Academy of the Arts (FAA) is at the forefront of this development, making it the culture haven in the south. The art academy was founded by the city's ever-active art patron and fiction writer Aida Rivera Ford in 1980 (FAA was formerly the Learning Center for the Arts). So far, Davao has produced two national artists in painting, namely, Victorio C. Edades and Ang Kiu Kok. The former is the acknowledged Father of Mother Art in the country while the latter is renowned as the country's leading figurative abstractionist. The FAA, in its infancy, was under the directorship of the late Edades. On a hallowed hall at the FAA is displayed the permanent Edades memorabilia, a fitting monument to the revered national artist. Art here must also mean fun because a work that occupies the entrance of the FAA building is a play sculpture by another national artist, Napoleon Abueva, thus marking the place a meeting point of art's great figures.
Boasting of a high educational standard, the non-sectarian and art oriented institution offers pre-school, grade school and high school. In the past, it has hosted important exhibitions on Philippine art like the "Abueva at Iba Pang Manlilikha," a sculptural exhibit while two National Creative Writing workshops included the national artist N.V.M. Gonzalez as among the distinguished panelists.
A third level climb will reveal the Centennial Mural covering the entire floor of the fine arts college. December 23, 1995 marked the unveiling of the commemorative life-size Edades statue. At its base is a relief of his once controversial "The Builders" masterpiece. The towering sculpture was executed by two members of the FAA's faculty, Jimmy Ang and Ben Banez.
During the unveiling ceremony, Edades' late widow Jean Edades, a noted grammarian who was 88 years old at that time, graced the occasion. Also inside the campus are a collection of priceless bamboo sculptures by the late Joe Patinio who is considered as the best bamboo artist in Southeast Asia.
The traveler seeking art will hardly get lost in Davao because the printing of an artmap of the city was initiated by FAA and sponsored by the city government under Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte, which appropriately indicates artstops with a brush and palette board icon. Another publication Davao possesses is an Artist's Directory, a pictorial guide profiling more than a hundred resident artists in alphabetical order. Art is so alive and not merely surviving in art-friendly Davao. Surely the city has what it takes to be an art center with all the proper infrastructure in place like venues for exhibitions, art institutions and libraries, museums and the much needed publications to expose the local art tribe.
(September 16, 2003 issue)
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