‘High Spirit’ highlights women’s inner strength
“HIGH SPIRIT,” the art exhibition, celebrates the centennial anniversary of College of the Holy Spirit, Mendiola (CHS). Fifteen accomplished CHS women alumnae in their various fields of endeavor participate, with their art to be viewed at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Little Theater lobby and secondfloor hallway. The exhibit runs until March 27. Free viewing is open daily Tuesday-Sunday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., and during theater performance intermission.
CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts and CCP Thirteen Artists awardee Imelda Cajipe Endaya, together with New York-based printmaker and Pollack-Krasner grantee Lenore RS Lim, gathered the works and asked artist colleagues from different parts of the world to form this collection as an expression of gratitude to the school, which they credit for the strength of the women alum- nae’s inner formation
From Mallorca, Spain, Aurora Go Bio Shakespeare, an industrial and graphic designer, participates with a series of colorful abstract floral forms that symbolize empowered femininity. From Dubai, Chi Panistante, an accomplished graphic designer, interprets with a strong Biblical perspective the dynamism of daily life in the Arab state through her disciplined circular compositions. From New Jersey, painter and children’s book illustrator Athena Santos Magcase Lopez, presents her landmark illustrations for “The Magic Jeepney” and mixed-media collage “This is Betty Makoni,” about the founder of Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe.
Returning from a three-month art residency in Yokohama, Japan, Mimi Tecson shows her new series of pop-culture assemblages in glass jars, exploring connections between her personal emotions and memory.
UST professor Rhoda Recto uses watercolors in the Letras y Figuras genre to interpret the poems on Batangas and Quezon landscapes written by the nationalist statesman Claro M. Recto.
Theater director, art educator and portraitist Emi Masigan Mercado exhibits her colorful, cheery paintings of women.
CHS professor, interior designer, graphic artist and writer Celine G. Borromeo exhibits her book illustrations “For Now and Lifetimes Ago” and “Circles with Open Ends.”
Art teacher and Rona’s Art Center owner Rona BuenasedaChua exhibits her delicate penciland-watercolor paintings of fishes in water and still lifes in her best naturalist style.
Elaine Ongpin Herbosa was a successful stocks and insurance marketer who reinvented herself to become plein-air painter and owner of the gallery L’Arc en Ciel.
Spanish teacher Maria Antonia Gonzalez-Cruz first turned to calligraphic painting as a stroke patient’s therapy, and has created a collection of remarkable Chinese paintings.
Junior executive Tiffany Elaine Ty exhibits her digital art “Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder.”
“High Spirit” artists take this opportunity to honor two late colleagues, Maria Gracia Gar-
gantiel of Manila Cultural Office and Rosita Tayag-Natividad of New York University. Gargantiel passed on in 2010; her pastel paintings of lush marshes and waters were lent to the exhibition by her family. Tayag-Natividad, who had arranged that her early black-andwhite lithographs be exhibited, very recently passed away at age 83.
“High Spirit” represents the spirit of excellence in various styles and modes of articulation. The works in the exhibit are meant to inspire its viewers into looking at art-making as a creative, humanly integrative process.