ART can be regarded as an individual endeavor, but also binds people as one.
This is the underlying concept of an art workshop held last November 23 to 24, 2018 dubbed the 1st Pantaron Mountain Range Art Workshop held for Grade 7 to college students of the Community Technical College of Southeastern Mindanao (CTCSM) in Barangay Lapu-Lapu, Maco, Compostela Valley.
The CTCSM is the only community college exclusively for indigenous peoples and have students of different indigenous groups from all over Mindanao.
The team of artists led by Mindanao artist Rey Mudjahid “Kublai” Millan and this writer representing Lawig-Diwa Inc., a non-government organization working for the development of visual art and artists, with Davao City National High School Arts and Design coordinator and visual art teacher Jefferson Bangot, and award-winning student of the University of Mindanao College of Architecture and Fine Arts Art Bongawan Jr. introduced to the group of students how to project in their artworks the beauty of Pantaron Mountain Range, home of the Manuvu, Higaonon, and Bukidnon tribes who are threatened by mining interests.
The range, which straddles the provinces of Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, Misamis Oriental, Bukidnon, Agusan del Norte, and Agusan del Sur is among Mindanao's last frontier of biodiversity and is home to the last remaining old growth forests on the island. It also hosts the headwaters of vital river systems including the Davao River.
But there are many applications for mining claims that now threaten this valuable resource.
Activities and protest actions geared toward thwarting these mining applications, however, have been identified with communist and left-leaning groups.
Just a week after the workshop, on November 28, former Bayan Muna Partylist Rep. Satur Ocampo with Association of Concerned Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro were held by police forces in Talaingod, Davao del Norte as they accompanied 29 students and 12 teachers of lumad schools in Davao del Norte, among them students of CTCSM, and several other members of the National Solidarity Mission numbering a total of 79 people.
The premise being, why not use art?
By making art and painting the beauty of Pantaron Mountain Range, the children will send a message to a bigger audience who may respond to their cries for protection of the valuable range.
When the cries and shouts become overpowering, sometimes an appeal to the senses and soothing peace brings better appreciation, understanding, and oneness.
The children were thus made to draw what individual student say is in Pantaron Range and then pass the board to the student beside them who will in turn draw what another student says can be found in Pantaron Range.
The drawings are made in marker pens creating what can be called a chaotic art as each student draws on one board and the original board of one student returns to him, not quite how he or she would have wanted it to be. But that is what they have to work on.
The afternoon session was coloring the drawings. The coloring phase lasted until morning the following day, a Sunday.
On the other side of the workshop room is a separate art workshop that is still part of the 1st Pantaron Mountain Range Art Workshop with Angely Chi and Ramo Botero.
Botero encouraged the children to tell the folk stories of Pantaron while Chi conducted a workshop on soil painting and eco prints.
They ended with the children also making paintings with acrylics on canvas.
The paintings made in the Lawig-Diwa workshop will be post-processed by the group. These are envisioned to be put up in an exhibit for the children's drawings to speak of the range's biodiversity and importance to human survival in Mindanao.