Twenty-twelve was a year of retrospectives in the Philippine art world. The most significant from the vantage point of art history would be the multiple shows (at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, UST Museum, UP Vargas Museum and Metropolitan Museum) to mark the 10th birth anniversary of National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco.
The 21 cultural masters of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) from its School of Living Traditions (SLT) were recognized during Dayaw, the largest celebration of indigenous cultures in the Philippines, at Barasoain Church in Malolos, Bulacan.
“I am a lawyer, and I am in prison. It’s a long story.” It’s the perfect opening line for a brand-new John Grisham book. “The Racketeer” (Doubleday, New York, 2012, 340 pages) is the lawyer-turned-writer’s 25th novel, and it’s a legal thriller, the kind of book that Grisham might as well have invented, but this is one he turns inside out.
The 2012 Conference of the Philippine Center for International PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) unleashed a barrage of issues, subthemes, papers, points for discussion, opinions, questions and answers closely or loosely connected with the main theme: “The Writer as Public Intellectual.”
One of the most disconcerting things about Christmas concerts is that you get an overdose of Christmas carols some of which are better off heard on noontime TV shows than showcased in a formal concert.
At the St. Luke’s Hospital lobby, baritone Jerome Sibulo, a doctoral student in Vocal Performance at the Indiana University School of Music, with collaborating pianist Naomi Sison, treated the hospital’s medical and administrative staff and walk-in visitors to a treat, “A Classical Christmas.”
“I believe in God. Only I spell it Nature.” That intriguing statement from the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright precisely intersects with the sentiments of Filipino artist Edwin Wilwayco who, with his deeply felt Christian beliefs and choice of a pervasive artistic theme, celebrates with another outpouring of artworks in a show steadfastly titled “In Nature’s Realm: So Quietly the Earth.”
Outside St. Joseph Parish Church in Las Piñas City, a vendor prepares “bibingka,” a sweet and spongy rice cake, to sell to people attending dawn Masses. The nine-day tradition
AHA Chef Instructor Joey Carpo shows how to cook and prepare Banana Bread.
For a beauty queen, winning the Miss Universe crown would have been everything. Not for Miss Philippines Janine Tugonon.
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