Art in the City: An Informal Approach to Hope & Beauty

Teaching is passing along knowledge to others

We love holding accessory making workshops. The gathering of people to learn or pass down knowledge and skill is a meaningful lesson for one’s soul.  For the beginning of this year, we were fortunate to receive gracious invitations to conduct workshops to share our particular medium of art: handmade costume jewelry and accessories, by individuals and institutions. 

Palamuti Artisan Novie Gaye Katimpo is from a remote rural province. Now she designs and teaches art in the form of handmade accessories 

The first of which was made possible through the initiative of our good friend Joy Mendiola, writer for the blog “Occasions of Joy”, she organized a group of young elementary school boys and girls for a three-part seminar entitled “The Joy in Arts and Crafts” as part of celebrating the fifth year anniversary of her blog. It was held at Aquinas School, San Juan , an exclusive school for boys founded by Spanish Dominican priests in 1965.  The second invitation to conduct a similar event came from the Women’s Public Health Unit of East Avenue Medical Center . The hospital was established in 1979 by the infamous president/dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It stands today with a mandate entrusted by the Department of Health to provide accessible healthcare services and to advance the degree of medical training, knowledge, and practice of health care professionals in service to the Filipino people. 

Visual Artist (Painter) Nikki Ocean teaches "Basic Fashion Illustration" 

Steph Lopez is a visual artist (sculpture) by trade. Her works have been featured in leading art galleries in the Philippines.

Both these places can be considered “serious places”. In one, young and impressionable minds are being incubated to become better equipped to make life-changing decisions, while in the other, the very lives of people are negotiated on a daily basis through a clockwork cycle of diagnosis, treatment, and research. You cannot blame anyone for thinking that art has no place in such planes of human existence. 

Participants from the Public Health Unit take in Wire Art lessons.

"To teach is to learn twice over."

Though art is traditionally not attributed equal scholarly reverence as rigorous disciplines such as mathematics, science, and language, its value is integral to the formative effect running deep in the veins of civilization.  The arts greatly influence culture, and culture greatly influences our society. It is a form of expression through a medium in which others can view, hear, and experience others’ thoughts and emotions. If academic and medical institutions provide pillars and foundations the nation, then art and culture serve as the essence a nation’s soul.    

We are thankful for the gift of art, teaching, and learning.

Art’s greatest medium is hope. What good are bright minds if they are selfish and cannot see needs beyond their own? What good does providing the best medical treatment do if only a few can do so? Hope is the theme that binds people, places, ideas, institutions, and generations. Through our handmade accessory-making workshops, we are adding our drop-in-the-sea to art, and through art, we are making an indirect contribution to hope.

Keeping it real.- PJV