Every time I revisit this story, I always picture a Christmas tree in a corner, beside it a mug of something hot that’s gone cold with the breath of December, and Danny Elfman music played on a celeste and a women’s choir wafting from somewhere.
When she was four years old, the artist Impy Pilapil was creating forms out of torn paper with her hands, since she wasn’t allowed to use scissors yet. She would then prop up the pieces. Her mother said they resembled human figures. “Perhaps,” Impy shares, “they were my first ‘sculptures.’”
Was all that a foreshadowing of that little girl pursuing her craft? She answers, “I cannot say that becoming a sculptor was a conscious decision. It just so happens that three-dimensional forms feel most appropriate in communicating and sharing my work.”
To communicate, to share.
These are two things the artist has done well: the first is making her mark as an artist by communicating mystery, the non-distinction between form and function, the ocean wave constantly spinning forms inside her head. (Impy started with serigraphs on paper which she exhibited in Rome in 1973; since then she has embarked on a personal journey of “understanding nature and expressing awe.”) The second is making her mark as a human being by sharing.
For UNICEF’s Auction for Action fundraising activity in 2013, Impy created a 10x4-inch sculpture titled “Eternal Christmas Tree,” a hand-painted, hand-shaped yuletide tree glass growing on carved marble. Waves of color, bubbles of glass provide it an illusion of light and movement blooming from inside a piece of white stone. There’s something metaphorically Christmas-y in that description.
Just like how Pilapil donates her time and artistry for the good folks at the Kythe Foundation with its aim of improving the quality of life among hospitalized children with cancer and other chronic illnesses. Impy does so by creating small Christmas trees in editions of 10 to help the foundation raise funds. When she installed décor at the Hyatt Hotel lobby, she even snuck in a donation box for Kythe.
“Christmas becomes meaningful as we look back on how we spent the year,” she explains. “Did we do enough to make others and ourselves happy? Did we help make the world a better or worse place? These things should be reflected upon daily and not only during the holidays.”
As for Christmases in the Pilapil household, the waves of emotions — just like the undulating shapes in the artist’s sculptures — are diverse: happy ones, sad ones, each one is unforgettable and sensationally unconventional.
“All our Christmas celebrations are landmarks of happiness in their own right. Being thankful for what we have makes us happy and very few things make us sad.”
Holidays go like this: Friends bring in food, while Impy sculpts something in the kitchen, usually paella. The dog Vito will follow the smells of Christmas.
“Roasted lamb is the obvious favorite and is possibly the most requested among friends. On separate occasions and if time permits, I go for Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon with pearl onions — a small challenge but quite rewarding. But Christmas is all about family first. A close second would be food (laughs).”
Impy and her daughter Isa (a fellow artist) strive to eat healthy all year round. “But come Christmas time, there are indulgences not to be missed. I have a weakness for Italian desserts and often find myself buying too much during the week — frustrating my daughter’s strictly enforced weekend cheat-day rule (laughs). But even though Isa isn’t much on sweets, she too succumbs to these delectable treats this time of the year.”
As for a yuletide table motif, some of us would be surprised that an artist such as Impy Pilapil would never go for one.
“Old and new peculiarities that stay on the table all year round are mostly just conversation pieces that add to the overall festiveness of our gatherings. The configuration of the different areas of our home studio changes constantly during the year and is dictated by the spatial demands of creating works of any size. This practice also applies to my kitchen — I love cooking and sometimes wish I had more time to experiment with new dishes.”
But Impy’s time is monopolized by her experimentation with sculptural shapes. Even her beloved Christmas tree sculptures undergo alterations through the years. (At some point, she even made a ceramic Belen.)
“I started making the glass Christmas trees in the ’80s as personal gifts to friends, family and valued clients — they were not meant for commercial distribution. I never would have guessed that they would become popular gift items. Some folks even started collecting them, and this has driven me to make each tree unique, knowing that people derive pleasure from them that way.”
Her latest creation is the one found at the main lobby of Conrad Hotel. Impy concludes, “It is perhaps my most definitive one, and it probably best defines my personal aesthetic.” The ultra-modern Christmas tree is called “Celesté Yule,” and it stands 14 feet tall: an intertwining of high-grade steel and glass orbs. Visitors can even see their reflections in its shiny, silvery surface.
Impy Pilapil probably did so, too: catching a glimpse of herself as a four-year-old girl cutting bits of paper into the shape of humankind.