Molano’s jewel of an exhibit

Time stands still when jewelry artist Celia Molano creates her unique, one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces. Crafted from antique beads, excavated stones and rare found artifacts in combination with modern, and even indigenous materials, Celia’s jewelry has been described variously by critics as "audacious," "lavish, florid, bold, innovative" and "exquisite." Anthropologist E.P. Patanne, in his book The Jewelry Art of Celia Molano, A Glimpse of Asian and Philippine Jewelry Traditions comments further: "She designs jewelry by totally disregarding the historical sources of her finds, crossing all cultural barriers in order to achieve the symmetry, harmony, and balance intrinsic to all good art. One might add, perhaps superfluously, she crosses time barriers, as well."

Nowhere will this be more evident than in Celia’s show Timeless Treasures, opening on Dec. 6 at the Luz Gallery in Makati City, where the artist will exhibit pieces culled from her total of 18 exhibitions both here and abroad and from her personal collection, as well as her line of new creations. The show will not only be a retrospective of Celia’s well-known exotic blendings of antiquity and art, not exhibited locally since her 1995 show at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, but more excitingly, it will spotlight the artist’s subtle transition to a more contemporary interpretation of jewelry as art.

Celia will be returning to the scene of her first public venture as a jewelry artist and her first Philippine triumph, the Luz Gallery. On a home visit in 1987 from Indonesia, where her husband, Jose Molano, a United Nations official, was posted, she attended a cocktail reception where she met by chance renowned painter-sculptor Arturo Luz. The necklace she was wearing caught the eye of Luz, who, upon learning she had designed it, promptly invited her to exhibit at his gallery.

The Luz Gallery is the oldest art gallery in Manila and exhibits are held there only by invitation. As it happened, it was the success of her show at this prestigious venue that propelled Celia into a career as a serious jewelry artist.

Luz, now a National Artist, is the biggest influence on Celia’s artistic development, which is not an unexpected evolution, since his works line the walls of the painter’s Ayala Alabang home. His clean, ordered minimalist and linear abstractions reflect in the new collection Celia calls her "metal sculptures." These are a range of necklace bracelets, and earrings of gold and silver, in geometric figures – squares, rectangles and circles – given a touch of sandblasting on their matte surface and edged with granulation. The last, a favorite embellishment used by Celia, is an ancient jeweler’s technique of soldering tiny pellets of gold or silver one by one on a bigger piece. Both the sandblasting and the granulation give a tactile attraction to the jewelry, achieving the effect of sculpture, albeit in miniature.

"This is my tribute to Arturo Luz," says Celia. "However, I have done it in my own style. It is still very me."

Utterly Celia are her new, delightful renditions of nature, her other great inspiration. Her creativity mines whatever she sees about her. Gold and silver starfishes, elephant tusks, sea waves, moon rocks and stars, respectively quiver, glisten, undulate, glitter, and twinkle, on the wearer’s arms, neck, ears. True to her calling, she is able to imbue with excitement even the most humdrum of themes. A garment flung over a clothesline in her laundry yard becomes a graceful breeze-blown pendant for a dog collar.

A graduate of Fine Arts of the Philippine Women’s University, Celia’s life-long love of antique ornaments was ignited by the gift of old faience beads as a child from her grandmother. Later, as the wife of a United Nations official, she traveled the world, searching out Oriental souks and Asian curio shops for antique beads, excavated objects, and unusually-cut semi-precious stones. In the process, she discovered the history behind every bead and gem, and her fascination with ancient civilizations and cultures grew.

As she puts it today, "One day, I started stringing my finds, combining color, shape, and texture, transforming my collection into pieces of jewelry. My training as a visual artist was challenged to create more, as I ventured into the possibilities of this new-found medium."