“SAMPAYAN Blues,” the ninth solo painting exhibition and installation by Babeth Lolarga, freelance writer, painter and teacher, is running at the Sanctuary Gallery, Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary (MES), North Santo Tomas Road, Campo Sioco, Baguio City.

A migrant to Baguio since 1992, Lolarga is aware of the housekeeper’s dilemma when the monsoon months bring in days and nights of wind and rain without let up. Wet laundry takes longer to dry and becomes smelly, walls and shoes become moldy, moods are subject to the Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).

Lolarga’s works use mixed media, mainly acrylic on canvas paper, and are installed on a clothesline-like laundry left to dry indoors. Behind each painting are her scribbled, journal-like notes on the making of each work or the sketch for it before the images are finalized on the other side. These “doodles” and “notes” also serve the function of authentication papers for each work.

Also to be installed in the exhibition are some furnishings to give the space the look of an artist’s studio and housekeeper’s den, a reference to the balancing act women artists with families do.

A Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Philippines Baguio and journalism graduate of UP Diliman, Lolarga has joined exhibits with her colleagues in the Baguio Aquarelle Society and helped organize writing workshops in the city.

All proceeds from “Sampayan Blues” will go to the environmental advocacy of the MES and the maintenance of its new chapel. Show runs until Nov. 14.