Pinoy artists doing well in LA

( First of 2 Parts )

Towards the end of last year, I got inspiring e-mails from two Filipino artists now based in Los Angeles, California. One came from – surprise, surprise – Rodolfo Samonte. Yes, folks, Rudy, as we all know him, is very much alive and well and kicking in LA, contributing his significant share for a livelier Pinoy art scene in the West Coast. Another came from young artist Danvic Briones, who for over two years now has called LA his home. The two are wonderfully doing well and where their artistic careers are the matter, they are both sporting winning cards in the game they play so well.

"Actually I really don’t have much to tell with regard to my development as an artist in the USA. Instead, I raised a family, I have two boys, 23 and 10 years old, and because of the younger one’s age I’m still busy attending to his needs. As an artist you might say, it’s been a long hiatus since I left the Philippines in 1979. When I first arrived here, I started working right away in a company, which took up much of my time. I had one group show at that time in a now defunct gallery called the Shinno Gallery which was right in front of the Los Angeles County Museum. But that was it," starts Rudy’s letter.

After more than two decades of non-art living, Rudy is back in the scene with a vengeance doing digital art. His comeback happened in 1999 when Alfredo "Ding" Roces, another Filipino artist based in Sydney, Australia, got hold of his e-mail address from a mutual friend. Soon after exchanging how-are-yous and pleasantries, Ding e-mailed Rudy a scan of his right hand with the note that he was starting an interaction group in the Web among artists. He called this group E-Banggaan or Banggaan sa Internet.

Rudy admits that he didn’t know how to respond to the new challenge as he didn’t know one could even send images in the Internet. He started learning Photoshop and soon after, he sent Bangaan a photo of the basketball court where he plays, inviting members to interact with it.

Rudy compares E-Banggaan to a jazz session, "where various musicians are given full play to bring in their own improvisations in solo passages while integrating with the basic beat or theme of the music. It is art as a collaborative effort as opposed to art as an exclusively individual’s creation. The notion is not really anathema to art practices, for after all architecture involves a team effort of various individuals with various skills, and music is performed by various musicians playing various instruments; theater and film are decidedly the products of group effort."

In the Philippines, interaction work is not alien in the art scene. Interaction painting was introduced by Alfredo Roces to H.R. Ocampo, Cesar Legaspi, Eduardo Castrillo, Tiny Nuyda, Rod Paras Perez, Rudy Samonte and Onib Olmedo who were members of the Saturday Group (or the Taza de Oro Group) in 1971 at the Solidaridad Galleries.

Interaction readily serves Banggaan’s objectives where artists bring to the Internet imaginative visual forms. Seeing these original creations retransformed by other artists breathes a new dimension into art making. The solutions more often than not take the artists by surprise. A work takes a life of its own, allowing others to modify, alter and change images, yet retaining something of the original. The result is a successful collaborative collision among artists.

Today, Banggaan counts on the following members: Ding Roces in Sydney, Glenn Bautista and David Bautista in Imus, Cavite, photographer Ben Razon, Bencab in Baguio, Tiny Nuyda and Pandy Aviado in Manila, Melissa Camacho and Rudy Samonte in Los Angeles, California, and Claro Cortes III in Singapore.

Early in 2002, Rudy worked on to raise the level of his art further than just the Banggaan images. He started making abstract paintings on the computer in large formats, at least 40 x 40 inches to 40 x 60 inches.

"All my works are done in Photoshop which means I can easily incorporate photos in my new work, but so far I have chosen not to," Rudy reveals. "The new found medium lent itself quite well to what I’ve always loved to do: Color and shape and forms. The range of colors, tones and shapes that I can achieve is just amazing. I also started to have my work printed by one of the best places here for Giclee prints. This place guarantees all the works archival quality to last for about 200 years before they even start to fade. The works are all printed on really fine canvas. Last summer, I got invited to a group show of mostly Pinoy-American artists. The show, titled Kulay Puti at Kayumanggi, was at the Eagle Rock Cultural Center near downtown LA. Among the other artists in the show were Papu de Asis, Tony Reta, Jessie Santos, and Nelson Castillo. I didn’t realize there was such a large group of Filipino artists here in LA. One such artist, Hermie Tecson, even has a gallery in Long Beach and continually exhibits artists from the Philippines, like Gus Albor and Lao Lianben. I also joined another group show at a gallery called Sining Binhi right beside downtown LA and operated by Papu. I am also looking into having a one-man exhibition here in 2003 and maybe a balik-exhibit in Manila. Needless to say I am quite excited!"

Undoubtedly, Los Angeles is one of the best places for an artist to be with its very lively art scene and hundreds of galleries. The competition, however, is quite fierce with thousand of artists co-existing in the area. The venue to exhibit right now is Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, a city just west of LA.

"Openings at Bergamot," says Rudy, "are usually on Fridays and all the galleries (about 30) open at the same time. Ang saya, with champagne or wine flowing everywhere. I am now again a full-time artist. I quit my job five years ago and I’m back!"

Rudy finished art studies at the University of Santos Tomás. He held his first one-person show in 1969. Aside from important local group shows, he participated in Expo ’70 at Osaka, Japan, the 1973 Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil, and the fifth International Triennial of Colored Prints in Switzerland in 1970. He was widely traveled in Japan, the United States, South America and Europe, holding exhibits abroad while studying various printmaking techniques.

Rudy developed into a printmaker from various influences: Manuel Rodriguez Sr.’s workshops, Rodolfo Paras-Perez’s woodcuts, and Arturo Luz’s abstractions. He has consistently done abstract works since 1970. He was among the first to develop handmade paper for prints and paper sculpture. At one point, he did cast paper relief prints in which he rejected colors, replacing it with tones and cast shadows.

A recipient of the Thirteen Artists award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1974, Rudy won awards in the Art Association of the Philippines in 1966 for both his Love Garden, woodcut, and Benguet, serigraph, first and second prizes, respectively.

(Read on Danvic Briones next issue.)

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For comments, send e-mail to ruben_david.defeo@up.edu.ph.