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Inspired by the stages of toil in the sugar farm, in 2020 we planted the seed of a movement we now call Negros Season of Culture. “We conceived of threading stories of creativity into one regional narrative, creating a platform for local, national, and global audiences to discover what makes Negros special.”

In 2021 we will grow Negros Season of Culture. As we join the nation in marking the 500th year celebration of the coming of the Spaniards to our shores, our content will expand in depth and breadth. Our narratives will dig deep to find explanation behind customs, traditions, food, and crafts. There will be more stories to tell as expressions of Negrense heritage unravel and swell.

And we will reach far. The Negros Season of Culture will grow its community of believers and supporters. Here in the Philippines and throughout the world. We will be the conduit for collaborative work between talents in Negros Occidental and Filipino communities in Europe and the Americas. This, in realization of our vision to bring culture to commerce.

Rooted. Taking on the world.

Join us.

 

Ronnie Baldonado is a “photo storyteller”. He snaps his camera not
necessarily for news, but for sure to tell a story without the use of words. Lately, he was seen taking great shots at the Food for the Soul Bazaar.

Set up on the sprawling lawn of Casa A. Gamboa in Silay City, Negros Occidental, the bazaar was held last November 20 and 21. For many in the tourism industry who are in hibernation mode, news of the bazaar was like floating a trial balloon. It helped that the province’s quarantine status is at a moderately low level, or MGCQ. But organizer Reena Gamboa didn’t leave things to chance. She requested the city’s Covid action team to help keep watch against behaviors that do not follow safety and health protocols.



 

 And so, only with awareness of the risks that continue to lurk, with responsibility towards the community’s health, and with precaution so every vendor and customer is compelled to behave correctly, we can begin to plan to step out again. Perhaps, the Department of Tourism should institute a new accreditation status beyond the usual stars.  Maybe now the public will be better served if we know that a hotel, resort, restaurant, or events venue like Casa A. Gamboa is “A Responsible Place”.

Here now, through the lens of Ronnie Baldonado, we take a peek into inching forward to the new normal.

Ronnie Baldonado

Credits:
Photographs courtesy of Ronnie J. Baldonado. Text by Alan S. Gensoli.

I painted watercolor “thank you” cards for medical front liners who were risking their lives at the height of the pandemic.”

By Gigi Campos

As a young wife and mother transported to Negros from Manila in the early 70s, I easily fell in love with Negros—the landscape, the people, the arts and crafts, and definitely the food. Having taken some courses in interior design at the New York School of Interior Design, I partnered with a sister-in-law and opened a home furnishing store and interior design office in Bacolod. 

In the mid-80s a monumental crisis hit Negros that caused the collapse of the sugar industry. I soon found myself involved with different NGOs. With a small group of like-minded friends, we decided to spearhead livelihood projects for displaced sugar workers in Negros. Not long after, the Association of Negros Producers was formed and I became its founding president. The ANP’s mission was to provide an alternative source of income for the farm workers by promoting Negrense heritage and crafts.  

I also set up Reeds and Weeds, a company that manufactured products made from indigenous materials. I started to train and organize communities of weavers throughout the province.  

Then I fell in love with the mosaic art of Antoni Gaudi. On a visit to Barcelona I saw his radical approach to mosaic that mixed traditional square cut tesserae with irregularly shaped pieces, from broken ceramic tiles to stained glass, to other found objects. I was challenged. I told myself, I can do this! 

Upon our return home, I lost no time and started my first mosaic installation, a 4x8-ft high mosaic image of the sun for Solana, our vacation home in Sipalay, a city in the south of Negros Occidental. I was hooked. Many more mosaic installations followed in Solana—mosaic stairs, benches, tables, and garden decor.

I found fulfillment in sharing my passion for mosaic art. I wanted the community to recognize mosaic as an art form that can be pursued by anyone with the desire and passion for art. NVC Artisans of Hope is one of the beneficiaries of my workshops. Its founder, Millie Kilayko, was one of my students. Another is Lisa de Leon-Zayco who has already had several exhibits of her mosaic work in Manila and in Bacolod.

My most meaningful mosaic workshop came in 2019. I conducted it for the children of Kalipay Negrense Foundation. I was witness to the powerful impact of art and self-expression on the children, most of whom had experienced severe trauma in their young lives. 

And then my own trauma happened.

It was a diagnosis of breast cancer that shook my world. It came like a death sentence as I always prayed to God to spare me of this dreaded disease. I was fearful of the physical pain that came with it. I guess God sometimes leads us through a dark tunnel for us to appreciate the light that awaits us on the other side. 

At the onset, I struggled with the prospect of undergoing chemotherapy. I prayed for guidance. And in the end God spoke to me through the words of a priest in a homily about the lepers Jesus healed, when he said, “healing comes after obedience.” I was surprised when the priest turned to my direction and seemed to look straight at me and said, “obey your doctors and you will be healed.”

It has been a year since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’ve been through much, physically and emotionally. I am not yet at the finish line, but Philippians 4:11-14 says, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing, or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation…with plenty or with little. For I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Through the pains and discomfort of my body, my mind kept telling me I could get through the depression, anxiety, and even cancer by doing something creative that could benefit others. I painted watercolor “thank you” cards for medical front liners who were risking their lives at the height of the pandemic. NVC, who led the project, tucked the cards among donated PPEs.

It was in my quiet moments that I discovered the magic of what life is all about. I discovered a special love for God’s creation—the beautiful blue skies, brilliant sunsets, and all the different birds and flowers in the garden. In my pain God gave me the passion to pick up my brushes and paint once again, to work with my hands and discover new crafts, and to put into words all the wonder and discovery I was experiencing. 

My art has followed the different aspects of my reality. One of these is my deep and lifelong relationships with the women in my life, relationships that have remained strong—my mother, my sisters, my daughters, and friends.

Another aspect is my faith that has inspired me to create various mosaics of the cross, entire Stations of the Cross, and images of Mary, Mother of God. My faith allowed me to travel the difficult road to healing. Ironic as it may sound, cancer gave me a renewed passion for life. It gave me the heart of a fighter, thriver, survivor.

The Negros Season of Culture is a celebration of Negrense cultural traditions as expressed in various art forms. In 2020, it will include visual arts, culinary arts, film, and theatre.

 

Spearheaded by the Angelica Berrie Foundation, the Negros Season of Culture aims to bring Negrense arts and culture to the consciousness of the local community, and then share it with the rest of the world. Hence, the celebration’s tagline, “Rooted. Taking on the world.”

 

The vision of the Negros Season of Culture is to promote the cultural assets of our heritage and traditions, the unique identity of this province and the talent of its people.

We conceived of threading stories of creativity into one regional narrative, creating a platform for local, national, and global audiences to discover what makes Negros special.

The Negros Season of Culture is a messaging platform for a place-based brand of culture rooted in identity, speaking to the world in the universal language of Art and Culture, featuring creative innovators in unique settings that tell our story, beautiful rural landscapes and heritage homes that deserve to be preserved. 


There are many hidden gems in this province and we hope to bring them to life through the Negros Season of Culture. Connecting the
stories embedded in this place is the message of hope we want to ignite in this challenging time.

We hope everyone will join us to promote what we love about our identity, our culture and our home.

 

 

 

Catch the vision of the Negros Season of Culture!

 Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson congratulates the Negros Season of Culture.

 Multi-awarded actor Joel Torre invites you to be part of The Negros Season of Culture.

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The island of Negros always had a special place in the life, work, and art of Peque Gallaga. It was inspiration, refuge, and home, shaping his view of the world and his place in it. We pay tribute to him as we dedicate the first year of Negros Season of Culture to his memory. 

by Neil Solomon L. Locsin

The NOHC has been assisting academic researchers and persons interested in the past stories of the province. Its office in the north wing of the Provincial Capitol houses research material and a modest archive. The NOHC also conducts outreach programs geared for awareness of history amongst the youth and educators.

On November 5, 2018, on the 120th Anniversary of the Cinco de Noviembre Revolution, the Board of Directors of the Negros Occidental Historical Council was awarded "Outstanding Negrenses (in the field of History and Culture) by the late Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr.

Facebook page: Negros Occidental Heritage Council
link: https://www.facebook.com/Negros-Occidental-Historical-Council-110348934109497

In this video, Tats Manahan talks about the work of Alfonso Ossorio, in "Not an Angry Christ".

By Tey Sevilleno





“Negros is not just an enchanted kingdom from a fairy tale. It is alive and I am so happy to be
cast in it.”

I love Negros! This summed up my longing to go home to my island Negros a few years back, when suddenly it seemed I’d been gone for far too long. We are always told to fly out of our nests and spread our wings. But when I was in Manila building a career in a large corporation, I was constantly thinking of Bacolod and Negros, and everything that is in here.




While still at work in my office, I would daydream for days at the beach, chasing sunsets and the waves. Pictures weren’t enough for me. I had to make things up from memory. That was when I picked up a brush and some watercolors to paint sunsets and landscapes. I painted the landscape that my heart and soul yearned for back home. The majestic Kanlaon volcano and the endless plains of sugarcane were my usual subjects. Memories of fields of fire and smoke with a backdrop of a magical sunset haunted me. I painted that, in fact several times.

After a few months of daily painting, I mounted my first show by invite. I called on friends and family who were in Manila and their enthusiastic response told me I just had to go home. It wasn’t a dilemma anymore but a sure decision.




Packed my bags and shoved all my art stuff and flew home. With this love for Negros, I felt reborn with a new set of eyes, mind, and heart because I saw everything with all its facets. One normal day, I drove my friend to Banago port to take the “RoRo” ferry back to Iloilo. And as I turned back, a background of a vibrant orange sky and the raging golden sun hit the shanties from afar. It was amazing! When I went home I rushed to paint what I saw and felt at that moment—the shanties reflected the sun and the colors were shockingly bright, their stilts formed remarkable shadows beneath the many “balay-balay”, and there were a few boats preparing to go out fishing. It was magic! That must have been one of my most vivid memories. Banago became my inspiration for my Stilts series.

Not only do places inspire me, but here in Negros, people do as well. I will never fail to thank my mosaic guru, designer Gigi Campos. I am totally inspired by her art and her passion for design and for life itself. And of course, veteran artist Rodney Martinez who I highly respect and consider my mentor in art. He supported me and encouraged me to grow, and try out new things. He is someone I would want to be “when I grow up”.  I know that in Negros there are many artists in different disciplines—visual arts, design, fashion, theater, film, architecture, gastronomy. That’s why I love it here even more. Negros is not just an enchanted kingdom from a fairy tale. It is alive and I am so happy to be cast in it.




I knew then, and now, that home is where my heart and art is. “Ang akon isla” Negros.

Editor’s Note: The artist has since infected many with her love for painting. She conducts art classes and has inspired a few journeys. Her works are actively exhibited in venues in Negros and she maintains an online shop (inARTey) for her works. For more on her artistry get intouch with her through social media. Facebook @TeySev; Instagram @tey.sev; Twitter @TeyTeySev.

Paquit: “You know, it was a long time before Marie began to talk.”
Marie: “It was Esther who was my yaya, very quiet.”




We have found many ways of preserving images of the past, but nothing captures the nostalgia of one’s childhood more hauntingly than cyanotype. Wikipedia defines cyanotype as a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Its discovery in 1842 is attributed to Sir John Herschel, an English scientist and astronomer. Cyanotype looks very much like the blueprint that architects and building engineers use.

 

After 39 years in the United States, Angela Silva and her husband, Chris Juricich, returned to Negros from Berkeley, California. It was then that Angela embarked on a new career as a printmaker and a visual artist using cyanotype photography. “I combine my love of vintage Filipiniana and real photo postcards with printmaking and collage. My antiquarian sensibility layers rare photographs and studio portraits with maps and ephemera to denote a sense of time and place. In my work, I also explore identity and memory by combining found vernacular photographs with remembered stories,” says Angela. This includes ordinary, everyday photos and recollections from family members as well as her own.

Luckily for Angela, she comes with illustrious history. Her maternal lineage of the Javellana-Ledesma families provides abundant memorabilia, many of which have been tapped as subjects for Angela’s cyanotype projects. “Shadow Mothers” (Orange Project 2019, The Negros Museum 2020), pays tribute to the role of “yayas” or live-in baby sitters in the Negrense culture. These endeared women took care of children while the real mothers helped in the running of the hacienda or attended to social obligations. Angela shares, “I am interested in studying the mother-and-child pose as recorded in photos of biological mothers and attendant mothers…the stories of intimate history behind them—the mothering, the nurturing, and the subsequent separation between the women and the children they held with such pride and love.”




A larger cast of characters is had in Angela’s work “Juan and Nena 1926-1927”, where the artist chronicles the yearlong courtship of her grandparents, Juan Ledesma and Magdalena “Nena” Javellana. The final work, four volumes of postcard-size photo albums, track the travels of 10 cousins and friends onboard cruise ships to North America, South America, and Europe. Nena starts the voyage with two suitors and returns home engaged to Juan—a titanic love story on its own. But this masterpiece reaches beyond recounting a private family anecdote. It reflects a period in the existence of Negrenses that has defined the place and its people. And many times, stories like this cement a community’s pride in its cultural heritage. It is Angela’s duty to recapture those snippets of travel and courtship as authentically as possible.

That cyanotype as a form of alternative photography predates the film camera commands emotional connection. Angela produces the monochromatic blue image on archival quality paper to achieve a feeling of timelessness. And because it looks very much like a blueprint, it brings the art enthusiast to the very beginning of things, the starting point, the plot of a narrative about to unfold. Cyanotype, does indeed, romance the past to make it relevant once more.

Angela Silva currently works on new cyanotype projects, including one using old passports. View what she’s up to at IG@alegnaavlis and on Facebook: Angela Silva.

Slow Food Negros:
Heritage Food Stays Afloat

Without sounding biblical, the Ark of Taste of Slow Food International is a repository of heritage food ingredients created to preserve them against extinction. According to a press release from Slow Food Negros, there are several Negrense ingredients registered in the ark, among them, the Darag Chicken (our native chicken), Adlai, Batwan, Marang, Kadios, Warty Pig, and Criolla Cacao.

Slow Food Negros takes inspiration from Slow Food International, an organization founded by Italian Carlos Petrini in the late 1980s. Its website shares, “Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us.” (www.slowfood.com)



From Oct. 30, 2020, to April 2021, the slow food movement will celebrate the Terra Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy. The press release said, advocates from 160 countries come together in this biennial event to learn from talks as well as exhibits. Times have changed but the commitment remains. Notwithstanding the pandemic, many topics reminiscent of long-held traditions will be revisited in virtual talks, including preserving food sources, seeds endemic to particular places, and traditional farming practices. Reena Gamboa, Slow Food Negros president, says, “I am a farmer myself, and I do realize the importance of taking care of earth’s blessings and going back to the basics. Food production is taken for granted and farmers always get the least attention in this world of digitalization and information technology.”



 

That’s about to change. This time Terra Madre will be on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram running talks and events, exploring traditional food possibilities under the theme, “Our Food, Our Planet, Our Future”.

In step with the times the press release said, “…preservation of local food cultures and traditions is important not only for historical and sociological purposes but also for a balanced local biodiversity and food security in our nation. This COVID pandemic is an opportunity to open the eyes of our fellow Filipinos in nurturing plants and animals that are indigenous to our country.”

 A kitchen serves up Negrense heritage



The new normal has started. It is a world where people step out with caution and awareness and responsibility. A world quite unlike our get-up-and-go carefree ways just lived months ago. Come to think of it, the wisdom to embrace challenges and innovate has been a hallmark of Negrense resilience through crises over centuries. And while this pandemic might be a heavier burden to pull, trust Negrenses to find their emotional tug, inhale, and heave-ho.

In Negros, a house teeming with heritage, from the front door to the kitchen, is making a unique mark in this countryside restaurant landscape. The historic Casa A. Gamboa in Silay City, Negros Occidental, has opened its doors to intimate group dining reservations for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all meals in-between. Its veteran kitchen, repository of cooking secrets admired through the years, is again abuzz.



 

Once visited by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the house and its sprawling garden, Jardin de Alicia, were built in 1939 by Aguinaldo Severino Gamboa and his wife, Dr. Alicia Lucero Gamboa. Its Old World charm lends to soulful, hearty, even nostalgic dishes, many coming out of heritage recipes. For years too, Jardin de Alicia has played host to the annual Adobo Festival. While the event has been temporarily put on hold due to the pandemic, a menu of delectable, insightful adobo dishes is to be expected in the offering.





 

The food experience begins with a painstakingly designed table setting that, by itself, is a feast for the eyes. Reservations are requested three days in advance so guests can plan their meals using farm-fresh, market-fresh ingredients in season. The menu is specially put together by the family matriarch who holds nothing but the highest standards in quality and taste. It is then meticulously executed by a seasoned kitchen staff.

For everyone’s health and peace of mind, Casa A. Gamboa accepts reservations from four to 15 guests only. Masks and shields are required, and guests may choose to dine at the open balcony, the airy dining room, or al fresco out in the garden, should the weather permit. Those who wish to experience dining on heritage cuisine straight out of a heritage home may visit its Facebook Page, Casa A. Gamboa.

Text by Alan S. Gensoli. Photos courtesy Reena Gamboa.