Testing: February 2021

Thursday, February 25, 2021

February 25, 2021

NEW DIRECTIONS Digital Art 2021: Negros | CHRISTOPH SAGEMULLER

Candy-Coated Sadness
by Jubal Gallaga

On paper, 25-year-old Christoph Sagemuller appears to be at the forefront of the digital wave of artists in this new decade. He lives in Seattle, Washington State, and works primarily on his iPadPRO and MacBook. He is strongly affiliated with the Musuem of Pop Culture in Seattle (popularly known as MoPOP) and he teaches art online on the learning platform, SkillShare.

However, just like his works, there is more to Sagemuller than lively colors and in-your-face images. Sagemuller graduated in 2016 from La Consolacion College in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental in the Philippines. His degree in Digital Media Arts, despite its name, gave him a thorough grounding in traditional art forms. He learned anatomy, how to paint with oils, acrylics, and other media. In truth, his shift to digital art was more out of convenience than a true preference. But perhaps, wisely so.

In 2018, Sagemuller moved to Seattle and it was simply easier and more expedient to do art on his computer and tablet. He didn’t have the space or the resources to set up a traditional art studio. Going digital meant that all the tools were not only in his computer or tablet, but, in the case of his tablet, he could carry it around anywhere and thus be able to draw anywhere. He could also safely store his work digitally. He did not have to worry about framing his work or damaging it with humidity.

He was not a stranger to digital media, however. He received his first drawing tablet when he was 12 years old and, as Sagemuller recounts, he would draw around 10 hours a day, even back then. “So I always kinda knew I wanted to be an artist ever since I was a kid,” he says, “In school I’d just be drawing in my notebook. I didn’t really care about school at all,” he adds, breaking into a laugh, “since it didn’t really interest me. I would get into trouble a lot with my teachers because they’d check my notebooks and they’d only find a few pages with notes and the rest would just be drawings. That’s what I would be thinking about all the time, just drawing, animation, and art.”

Sagemuller does miss working with traditional media. He admits he is slightly better at drawing with a pencil than with a stylus. He also shares that he gets a proper sense of scale of a piece when he sees it in front of him, than when he sees it on a screen. His digital work has existed both on the monitor and printed out to fill a 60-foot wall, and the difference seeing it on the wall versus on the screen is telling. That said, he still has a heavy preference for digital media. It makes the work easier. For example, he can select the exact color he wants and get the exact effect he wants faster. The struggle an artist normally undergoes to get that on physical media is now removed, so he can then focus on getting his idea translated into something tangible.

And Sagemuller’s ideas are tangibly eye-catching. They are visually arresting, immediately capturing your interest with bold colors and captivating subjects. Sagemuller works almost exclusively with portraiture. He feels an emotional connection to people that is just missing when he works on pieces without them, like landscapes.

Someone once pointed out that Sagemuller’s art is “candy-coated sadness,” an epithet that the artist embraces. His works are emotionally driven. “Art is the best way for me to communicate,” Sagemuller elaborates. He admits his mind does not think in words but in images and fragments. This is apparent in his trademark use of contrast, not just in the choice of bright colors, but more so, in juxtaposing those vibrant colors with melancholic subjects. He feels particularly drawn to these kinds of images. Just like when his family home in Bacolod was flooded and several family photographs were damaged, Sagemuller recreated the ones that meant most to him.

An emotional connection is important to this artist. When Sagemuller moved to Seattle, he felt a strong connection to Filipinos back home. He brings up how very supportive the art community in Bacolod City is, concluding that an art community may even be more important than art itself. And yet, as an artist who makes the most use of digital tools, he does get his share of comments on how digital art is not “real art”. Sagemuller quietly disagrees, pointing out that those who say so are almost always not fellow artists. He maintains, “It’s all the same. Drawing an image, whether with a pencil on paper or with a stylus on an iPad, it’s the skill that matters. If you give two people the same digital tools to create a drawing, it would not be similar, because artistry and skill exist in the person, not in the tools.”

Sagemuller is keen on sharing his expertise. He has taken the opportunity to do so by teaching on SkillShare, an online learning platform. He says that he started as a student himself back when he was still living in Bacolod City. The digital movement in the arts is not just providing new media for artists to create art, but to expand the reach of the artist: to be able to find teachers, students, even an audience all over the world. It was an especially useful avenue during the lockdowns. When the pandemic started, Sagemuller at first welcomed it as an opportunity to stay home and draw. But eventually, even the self-professed introvert realized the importance of human connection. Teaching, albeit online, gave that semblance of connection. Moreover, as revenue sources closed due to quarantine restrictions, being able to teach online provided Sagemuller a steady income.

“Don’t listen to people who say [Digital Art] is not “real” art or that it’s a “lower form” of art,” he

states. “That’s just their opinion. You should not be tied down by other people’s perception of

something just because they don’t understand it.”

Sagemuller’s work includes designing posters for MoPOP and the film “Logro” (a part of the Cannes Film Festival’s short film corner), as well branding identities for music festivals in the US. Now entering his field of vision is video game development. He has always played video games and sees it as a good medium for art, in fact, an interesting mesh of art, music, and narrative. Video game development provides the artist an avenue to merge skills, intersecting atmosphere, music, design, and story. As the physical world continues to crouch on lockdowns, Sagemuller slowly sees his artistic avenues opening up. “There’s a lot to explore,” he concludes.

His work is full of contrasts … choice of bright and vibrant colors juxtaposed with rather

melancholy subjects.

Sagemuller works almost exclusively with portraiture. He feels an emotional connection to

people

Digital media makes the work easier, for example he can select the exact color he wants and get

the exact effect he wants to show

Sagemuller’s work includes designing posters for MoPOP as well branding identities for music

festivals

When he moved to Seattle, for the first time he felt a strong connection to his Filipino side.

When the pandemic started, he welcomed it at first as he saw it as a great opportunity to

stay home and draw. But eventually even the self-professed introvert

realized the importance of human connection.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

February 24, 2021

New Directions : Faye Abantao

Art, Art and Craft

Digital Images on Folded Paper: A Union of an Ancient Artform and Bleeding Edge Style
by Jubal Gallaga

Faye Abantao’s marriage of digital tools and simple paper has produced stunning works of art. “I want the people looking at my work to feel a sense of connection—seeing beyond the imageries and becoming aware of the inner essence. I want them to immerse and ponder on the expressions and emotions of each work and how they would relate it to their day-to-day lives. I want them to think of the boundless possibilities that there is so much beyond what their eyes can see, I want them to be able to feel that excitement when they view my art.”

When you look at Faye Abantao’s work, you immediately notice its dreamlike quality and are intrigued by the unusual texture of her pieces. Abantao doesn’t paint on canvas, she instead transfers images into pieces of paper, each one meticulously folded like origami. Hundreds of pieces of paper, carefully folded by hand, uniform in size, to receive an image lifted straight off a dream.

The pieces of paper are not there just to be different, the creases and folds create shadows giving the images depth. Their lines fashioning an almost rippling texture that gives the piece a mirage-like quality, like heat haze. A collector once said of her work that it was a tapestry, that it evoked the banig, the local sleeping mat woven out of leaves. The images by themselves are noteworthy but it is the medium that really lifts Abantao’s art to another level.

It is all the more surprising that her signature technique was almost an afterthought.

Faye Abantao did not come from a particularly artistic family. Her interest was in advertising, not in the fine arts. After she graduated, she was ready to join the corporate world when friends and fellow graduates invited her to join them in a group exhibition. And she did, for the fun of it. However, she wanted to do the exhibit justice and thought of how to make her work stand out.

Abantao admits that growing up she didn’t think of herself as particularly artistic, but she did have an interest and a liking for origami. As she grew older she enjoyed making collages, particularly of photographs she herself took. There were other things that would inform on what would become her style. For example, in her early work, people were frequent subjects but recently her art is focusing on landscapes. Her use of color has also evolved, as it has changed from bright and colorful to subtler and muted hues. But it was photography and origami that formed the pillars of what would eventually evolve into her current technique. Regardless of subject matter or how its depiction, Abantao’s use of photographs and origami are constant and the core elements of her art.

Image transfer itself is not unique to Abantao, in fact, it’s quite common. What makes her work so striking are the images she creates and where she transfers those images to.

Abantao’s process starts with her being curious over something she read, saw, or heard, and then she decides to read more about it. Or, she chooses a theme she wants to explore. She then researches on it. She allows herself to be guided by what strikes her fancy: an image she sees that pops up in Google search results, an interesting fact, an idea that triggers a thought in her mind prompting her to follow it and see where that leads, and so on. She relies almost exclusively on the Internet for this research.

She then compiles these images and with the use of Photoshop, starts manipulating them to closely align what is in her mind’s eye. She doesn’t just use images she found online though, some are images she herself made.

She also begins folding the paper she will use. And the paper isn’t just any kind of paper. Abantao prefers pages from old books. She has discovered in her experience that acid-free paper is best at keeping the image after the transfer. She also finds it satisfying that these old books are being reused and repurposed. She finds that using paper as a medium gives a vulnerable, almost fragile, quality to her work. Paper is transformative as well as transformational, which are key elements in her art.

Origami lies in the heart of the transformative element of paper. Even the source of the paper she uses, from old books, leans into that transformative element. She takes a page off a book that carries text, folds it into a new shape, and then uses it as a vessel to carry images. The paper isn’t what it originally was, it is now a canvas to hold an image. It has transformed.

And it is in that very difference, its uniqueness that makes it transformational. It is unlike any other canvas. The creases and folds give layers, textures, and depth to what otherwise would have been another image.

There is something engaging about the contrast of her almost exclusive use of digital tools and resources for the creation of the images, even the process of rendering those images onto the paper speaks of the contemporary, yet the medium that captures and supports those images are practically prehistoric: paper, folded by hand.

Abantao has admitted that folding paper is therapeutic for her and she can do around five hundred of these a day. In one solo show, she used more than five thousand pieces of folded paper for fifteen pieces of art.

Within a year of graduating from La Consolacion College, in 2015, Philippine-born-and-raised Abantao was exhibiting at the Orange Gallery in Bacolod City and her work was being scouted by galleries in Manila. In the intervening years, she has not only exhibited in Makati, Quezon City, Taguig, and Iloilo City but outside the Philippines as well. In 2016, she was warmly received in Indonesia and even managed to secure a residency in Gwangju, South Korea in 2017.

In spite of all these successes, Abantao is not a full-time artist. She can be, but she confesses that if she did not have a job to go to, she would have nothing to draw. She works full-time in an advertising agency, using the experience and interactions she makes going out into the world to influence and inspire her art. Being engaged in the world is what drives her curiosity which lets her find things to capture in her folded paper.

She had to deal with the global pandemic and it has definitely shown in her art. Her theme for 2020 was isolation. Even Abantao herself noticed a shift in tone in her output. Her work before was vibrant and full of color, now they are more muted and reserved. She has also shifted the focus of her work from people to more landscapes. Although, the dreaminess is still quite intact. She wants to delve deeper into this and is eager to experiment in using just black and white imagery.

-----

She finds that using paper as a medium gives a vulnerable, almost fragile, quality to her work

Abantao doesn’t paint on canvas, she instead transfers images into pieces of paper, each one meticulously folded like origami

When you look at her work, you immediately notice its dreamlike quality

“I want the people looking at my work to feel a sense of connection—seeing beyond the imageries and becoming aware of the inner essence.”

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

February 23, 2021

NEW DIRECTIONS Digital Art 2021: Negros

Art, Art and Craft

---

His designs are known for their vivid, lush images with a strong emphasis on floral imagery

A Digital Connection
by Jubal Gallaga

The year was 2013 and Daryl Feril didn’t know where he was going. He had just graduated from La Consolacion College in Bacolod City, capital of Negros Occidental in the central Philippines, and had dutifully sent out resumés to all the companies he could think of, but unfortunately, he hadn’t heard back from anyone.

Then he received the phone call that changed his life. Was he willing to fly to New York City to design the illustrations for the Spring/Summer 2013 global advertising campaign for the DFS Group, luxury retailer for Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy? It can be forgiven if he at first thought that the phone call was a prank, but he was soon convinced by Melissa Overton, the campaign’s creative director. Overton reached out to Feril when she saw his work on a blog. She knew when she saw it that it was exactly what they were looking for, and tracked Feril down using the images online.

Feril is largely self-taught. He remembered attending art workshops as a child. Before graduating with an advertising arts degree, he was an engineering student. His art skills were developed from having to figure things out by himself. He says that his art is about 80% hand-drawn and 20% digital but he does use digital tools even when drawing. He grew quickly enamored with digital illustration, but back in 2012 in Bacolod, there wasn’t anyone to teach him how to do it. There was no one to ask, no one to mentor him, he had to learn how to do things himself.

In less than a decade, Feril’s list of accomplishments and clients has become noteworthy. Aside from DFS, he has also been tapped by Tory Burch, Jo Malone London, Singapore Airlines, Heineken Asia Pacific, Ford Motor Company, The David Lynch Foundation, and even the Walt Disney Company.

His designs for these clients are vivid, lush images with a strong emphasis on floral imagery. Feril’s art is inspired by nature. He particularly remembers his childhood spent in the countryside in Bayawan, a town in southern Negros Island. He has always been artistic. He was constantly drawing, and to his mother’s dismay, even on the walls of their house. His family moved a lot when he was younger, from Bacolod to Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao, and then back to Negros in Victorias City. He credits that for his exposure to different people and ways of life, all shaping his art today.

Out of his journeys, he has gained flexibility, being both an artist and a designer. And there is a clear delineation between the two. What he calls his design work, tends to be more colorful, with bold and strong imagery. His gallery work, what he calls his work as an artist, tends to be more personal, more restrained, and muted. He himself suggests it’s a way to escape from all the colors and lushness required by his clients from his design work.

He uses his gallery work to expand his artistry and to experiment. Defying common expectations, Feril as artist taps into other parts of his life. His artistic residency in South Korea in 2019 involved him creating a video installation as opposed to relying on illustration. He used the opportunity to not just explore and experiment in a different medium, but to challenge himself as an artist. He did not want to rest on his laurels. He saw installation as a personal weakness, a medium that was not just unfamiliar to him but one that he had never really worked with before. Instead of treading well-proven ground, he decided to face his fears and meet them head-on.

This is why Feril appreciates Bacolod particularly. He could theoretically be both designer and artist in any major city in the world but instead has chosen to work out of Bacolod. His reason is simple: the community. Bacolod artists are very generous with their time and expertise. When faced with the video installation in South Korea, he was both encouraged and aided by Manny Montelibano, a fellow artist with a background in the same medium. Feril feels it is quite rare to have this kind of support from fellow artists elsewhere.

It is also fair to say he is not giving up anything by working here. In this digital age, he can still entertain clients from all over the world and still enjoy the benefit of Bacolod’s artistic community.

Daryl Feril is an amazing fusion of two worlds that always seemed to be mutually exclusive. You could either be a critically-acclaimed artist yet not sell a painting until after your death or be a commercially successful designer but sell your vision to the corporate world. Yet here he is, walking proof that one can have commercial success as a designer whose designs are respected for their artistic merit. He is also a successful artist, whose work commands substantial prices. He lives in his hometown, surrounded by a supportive community, and blessed with a stable Internet connection to access an international client base.

This dichotomy is encapsulated by a simple philosophy of Feril. He is particularly pleased with his work for client Tory Burch. He feels that designing merchandise is the best way for people to be able to interact with his art. His designs on a bag are both beautiful, artistically appealing to the customer but also practical, a bag is something you use. “It is art,” he says, “you can touch, use, and bring home.”

He was constantly drawing, even as a child

His art skills were developed from having to figure things out by himself

His work is full of color, with bold and strong imagery

In spite of being able to work anywhere, he chooses to live and work in Bacolod City

Sunday, February 21, 2021

February 21, 2021

New Directions - Digital Art 2021: Negros

Art, Cultural Experience

By Jubal Gallaga

The Negros Season of Culture is an initiative to showcase the artistry of Negros Occidental. A province in the central Philippines, Negros Occidental has produced an incredible amount of artists that have enjoyed critical as well as commercial success at home and abroad. In celebration of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’s National Arts Month, the NSC is proud to showcase three amazing young artists from Negros Occidental.

These three artists are featured by the Negros Season of Culture as they discover, explore, and even pioneer areas in art and design during one of the largest global pandemics in history.

Faye Abantao, Daryl Feril, and Christoph Sagemuller have more in common than being Negrenses. These three artists graduated within years of each other from La Consolacion College in Bacolod City, the capital city of Negros Occidental. They are young, dynamic artists who, due to their schooling, have a grounded foundation in the fine arts but have branched out, experimented with, and are now using new and exciting media for their art. They are also the farthest thing from the stereotype of the starving artist.

Abantao, Feril, and Sagemuller are successful both critically and commercially. They each have several exhibitions under their belts. Their art pieces and designs command interest not just from private collectors but from Fortune 500 companies. They represent a new wave of artists from a place that has always celebrated and supported the arts.

They are also at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the current Information Age and the nascent Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Internet is used as a source for research as well as ways to communicate with people all over the world. Digital tools, virtual and real, are used to create pieces of art for commercial and aesthetic pursuits. Their reach covers the entire country to as far as South Korea and the United States of America, a feat that one argues could have only been possible for three young artists who just graduated from a local provincial college in the Age of the Internet.

Digital Art defies limitations traditional art has in its reach. A global pandemic may close galleries and museums and limit patrons, buyers, and art lovers from enjoying or buying artwork. However, an artist whose work is in virtual space does not share those limitations.

The prevalence of digital tools in people’s phones and computers, the ease with which they can be used has given rise to not only a new generation of artists but a new kind of artist. An artist who may not have ever even seen a tube of oil paint or an actual paintbrush, one whose portfolio exists entirely in the cloud, one whose studio and gallery are located in a hard drive somewhere. Just as charcoal had given way to paints, there is a new medium and artists who are making use of it.

Abantao, Feril, and Sagemuller are the first of many who personify the new direction that art and the artists are shaping themselves into in this new millennium. They speak a whole new language, one that is an amalgamation of traditional and the digital. Their works are unmistakable international in scope and appeal yet undeniably Negrense at heart.

One could say, it is a change of the seasons.

Thursday, February 18, 2021

February 18, 2021

New Directions : Christoph Sagemuller

Art, Cultural Experience

“When I was 12 years old, my parents got me my first drawing tablet. It was about three by five inches, pretty small, but I thought it was amazing. I felt like I was living the dream because I’ve been wanting one for a really long time, and I finally got did. When I got it I couldn’t stop drawing. I could draw up to ten hours a day.”

Christoph Sagemuller, born and raised in Negros, is an artist and illustrator who works on various media, including the traditional, like acrylic on canvas. His main tool however, is the digital. Based presently in Seattle, USA, he has done work for MoPOP (Seattle Museum of Pop Culture) and has been teaching courses on Skillshare, an online learning community for creatives.

Watch for the Negros Season of Culture feature on Negros artists Daryl Feril, Faye Abantao and Christoph Sagemuller this February 2021, in celebration of National Arts Month of the NCCA (National Commission for Culture and Arts.)

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

February 17, 2021

New Directions : Faye Abantao

Art, Cultural Experience

“When people see my work, it's new to them. It's not the usual oil or acrylic on canvas. It’s paper, it's something new.”

Faye Abantao is a young artist from Bacolod City in the Philippines whose work combines the manipulated images of the digital and the tactile quality of a traditional material, paper. Folded by hand, she finds that using it gives a vulnerable, almost fragile, quality to her art.

Watch for the Negros Season of Culture feature on Negrense artists Daryl Feril, Faye Abantao and Christoph Sagemuller this February 2021, in celebration of National Arts Month by the NCCA (National Commission for Culture and Arts.)

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

February 16, 2021

New Directions : Daryl Feril

Art, Art and Craft

Daryl is an artist and digital illustrator who was born in Negros Occidental, Philippines and lives and works in Bacolod City. His art has graced the international campaigns of LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton,) Jo Malone London, Singapore Airlines, Heineken Asia Pacific, Ford Motor Company, The David Lynch Foundation, and Walt Disney.

Watch for the Negros Season of Culture feature on Negrense artists Daryl Feril, Faye Abantao and Christoph Sagemuller this February 2021 in celebration of National Arts Month of the NCCA (National Commission for Culture and Arts.)

Monday, February 15, 2021

February 15, 2021

New Directions

Art, Cultural Experience

This February, the Negros Season of Culture joins the NCCA (National Commission for Culture and Arts) in its celebration of National Arts Month 2021 by featuring Negrense artists Daryl Feril, Faye Abantao and Christoph Sagemuller!

Thursday, February 11, 2021

February 11, 2021

Celebrating BAO

Celebrating BAO,

The Chinese Metal Ox is hardworking, active, always busy, and popular among friends. Him and BAO, like two peas in a pod.

It is told, at a party thrown by the Jade Emperor, the ox arrived second of 12 animals. Second to the rat, and for good reason. Along the way, the solicitous ox offered the rat a ride. And when they arrived, we suppose the rat jumped off and crossed the finish line first. Some say the ox was fooled. We say the ox obliged, out of the goodness of his heart.

Keeping the Chinese New Year allows us to reflect on a culture that influenced our national heritage long before all other colonial masters came. And in 2021, finding affinity to the Chinese Metal Ox, we celebrate BAO.

BAO: The Unbowed Carabao, is the proud figure that stands guard at the door of The Negros Museum in Bacolod City. Vignettes of life in sugar farms rendered in mosaic by Lisa de Leon-Zayco, wrap this five-ton sculpture by Rafael “Paeng” Paderna. BAO was commissioned by the Angelica Berrie Foundation as a gift to The Negros Museum in 2019. Thus was planted the seed of the Negros Season of Culture, whose mission is to celebrate Negrense heritage, the talents of its people, and what makes Negros Occidental unique.

BAO is one. He is king of the farm. The carabao dictates work hours, patiently weaving through furrows early in the morning then later in the afternoon, skipping the sun in-between. And so, his human master follows. This peculiar work arrangement, where man follows beast, is just one of many surprising stories depicted all over BAO, a singular work of art that acclaims centuries of integrity, industry, and innovation.

We invite you to join us in a series of delightful stories and engaging activities surrounding BAO: The Unbowed Carabao. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and visit our website at www.negrosseasonofculture.com