WASTE UNWASTED IN 3D ART
The current state of our environment is no secret. Proper garbage disposal has always been one of the problems that continue to plague the beautiful Queen City of the South. The streets are usually flooded every time it rains and dirty water overflows from clogged canals. With this in mind, Iris Mosaic decided to come up with a solution using aesthetics as the key to restore the beauty of Cebu.
The group held an exhibit of three-dimensional (3-D) artworks in Ayala Center Cebu which concluded last Oct. 30.
Jumping out of their frames and grabbing one’s attention are 3-D artworks that are meant to stand out. These are paintings made from recycled waste materials and remodeled to create masterpieces that are just screaming to get out of their boxes.
“When I came home to Cebu September last year, I came upon what were once hidden treasures; a pile of overstock and unused inventory that FCQ had piled up from 30 years of operation. Not wanting to throw anything away, I thought I’d create something new and nice and quite easy to do,” said Melvi Concepcion, founder of Iris Mosaic.
Iris Mosaic is made up of people who used to work in Francisco Concepcion Quisumbing (FCQ) Eximtraders Inc. which is a company that specializes in exporting fashion accessories made from organic materials. Having unused piles of
materials which were no longer needed for export, Melvi decided to put them to good use. Inspired by plain artworks from the internet, Melvi formed a team that would reinvent these plain simple paintings into 3-D artworks by incorporating recyclables—both organic and inorganic—to bring the artworks to life.
The main persons whom Melvi called to guide the group were Vic Rosello, Red Vestil and Jaime Francisco.
Vic, an artist, was the person in charge of creating most of the oil paintings that were used as backgrounds for the artworks. Red, having worked as FCQ’s researcher and designer, specialized in teaching the new recruits in making the artworks, and Jaime, as the expert welder, specialized in constructing the canvases which the group worked on.
“Around eight to nine other people worked on these artworks and these were just people who didn’t have anything else to do. Some of them didn’t even know how to hold a paintbrush. But after eight months, these are the results. I always believe that each one of us has an artistic side; it’s just a matter of waking it up,” said Red.