Public art promoting
environmental health
BY CARLA GOMEZ

Artists Kate Spacek Harrington and Felipe Castelblanco at the Negros Museum in Bacolod City yesterday.* (CPG photo )

An “American Arts Incubator” program utilizing public art as a tool to engage communities around dialog and potential action on environmental health starts this week in Bacolod City, and will lead to the unveiling of outputs on April 26.

It is a community event open to everyone, said American artist Felipe Castelblanco, who along with social artist Kate Spacek Harrington, is spearheading the Philippine-leg of the program in Bacolod City administered by the US State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) in collaboration with the Negros Museum.

The workshops of the program start Friday at the Negros Museum with an introduction to public art for participants.

“It's going to be something they've never done before, it's going to be fun and its going to allow whoever participates to walk away with a completely new perspective on the value of public art, value of co-creation and they will see their worlds internally and externally in new ways,” Harrington said.

Castelblanco, who aims to create “The People's Island”, a small floating platform of salvaged wood and other buoyant materials during the incubator program, said it will highlight the importance of the environment, especially the ocean and sustainability to everyday life.

“The People's Island is a way to instigate collective energy in which the people from Bacolod will collectively shape this vision of a more sustainable relationship with the environment. This project is participatory, it will not work if we don't connect with the people,” he added.

During the culminating public event of the US Embassy Manila art diplomacy program, The People's Island, will host artworks and performances, which will be visible from Bacolod's waterfront to a wide audience.

The entire development and exhibition process will be shared via photos and video on the American Arts Incubator web portal americanartsincubator.org.

Tanya Lopez, executive director of the Negros Museum, said students, artists, designers from 18 to 40 years old, are among those expected to participate in the program.

In the first round of the program, the ECA chose four countries – the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and Laos, Harrington said

The theme in Laos like in the Philippines will be environmental health, while in Mongolia it will be on economic development, she said.

In Papua New Guinea participating groups had totally different spins on gender equity, she added.

“In each country, the respective US embassies provided us with the desired focus for the social issue, and the sites for the program,” she said.

Castelbanco is one of four US artists selected to travel to Asia in 2015 to inspire creative ideas for community engagement.

The American Art Incubator is administered by ECA in partnership with ZERO1 based in Sa Jose, California.*CPG

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USLS student to
attend Earth camp

University of St. La Salle Masters in Environmental Engineering student, Kurt John Eliezer Cabillon, will represent the Philippines in the Young Southeast Asian Leader Initiative Generation Earth Camp on April 22-25 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a press release from the school said.

He is among the 10 youth participants and three mentors from the Philippines who will participate in the YSEALI initiated workshop, that aims to promote multinational collaborative effort among participants to address environmental issues through projects in two member states of the ASEAN, the press release also said.

The winning project will receive a seed grant, and the winning team will be invited to participate in a study tour in the United States, the press release added.*

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Swiss artist to exhibit ‘Faces'

The “Face Show”, a major exhibition by Swiss artist, Hannes Bertschi, on the faces of society in the 21 st century, will open Friday at the Gallery Orange, Art District, in Bacolod City, a press release from the gallery said.

The show features 19 artworks, or faces with stories to tell, that seem to unravel the real meaning of beauty; and faces that define the uniqueness of races, cultures and even one's own personality, the press release said.

The artist also exhibited in Café by the Ruins in Baguio in 2014, and in Gallery Captain Haddok in Boracay last month. The Bacolod exhibition will run until May 5, the press release added.*

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