Precious and few

Miss International 2005 Precious Lara Quigaman is flirting with thoughts of a political career once her reign is over.

"I’m starting to think about it," Precious told The STAR last week when asked if her future plans included a political career. "Manila Mayor Lito Atienza convinced me. So maybe I could start with running for councilor?"

The eldest child of Princesita and the late Nelson Quigaman, Precious thinks her most effective beauty secret is her smile. Otherwise, she follows no particular beauty regimen, her 12-hour days being her best workout. During a lull in her shoot for The STAR’s sister publication PEOPLE Asia magazine, Precious happily munched on Chicken Joy from Jollibee, skin intact and dipped in gravy.

Slim and svelte at 100 lbs., Precious used to tip the scales at 110 lbs. till the Tokyo Miss International beauty pageant. The practices and the stress made her easily shed off 10 pounds, although she was disappointed she didn’t lose an inch off her 23-in. waistline.

She reveals now that she had a gut feel that she would sashay out of the Tokyo stage as Miss International.

"I just had this feeling during the pageant in Tokyo, just as I had a feeling during the Bb. Pilipinas pageant in Manila that I would be one of the winners," she shares.

Apparently, few shared Precious’ gut feel. Sources say Philippine embassy officials in Tokyo did not give Precious any special treatment when she arrived in the Japanese capital as most were busy wrapping up their participation in the World Expo in Nagoya and the JATA Travel Fair in Tokyo. Besides, 26 years of pageants with disappointing results (as far as the Filipinos were concerned) probably made some of the officials think that this year’s pageant would be, well, ho-hum as usual. Thus, there was not a single embassy official or factotum present during the pageant.

"It’s okay, " Precious smiled when I asked her if she harbored any hurt feelings for the initial "snub" she got from government representatives in Tokyo. "Anyway, there were many Filipinos in the audience cheering for me."

"She’s really so nice, there are very few like her," says Grace Fornier-Magno, marketing group head of the Araneta Group of companies, which is handling Precious.

After she won, Philippine Ambassador Domingo Siazon Jr. and his wife Kazuko treated Precious out to dinner in Tokyo, which the 22-year-old beauty queen appreciated.

Precious and few are women like her, who, so far, seems unaffected by her instant fame and celebrity. Already, three big multinationals are laying tempting endorsement deals at Precious’ feet.

How long Precious will remain unspoilt by fame despite its heady rewards, only time will tell. But I’m betting on forever.

The softness of stone

Stoneware potter Camille Dacanay-Mendoza molds nature into her functional pots, plates, vases and other sculptural works.

"My plates are like rice fields – square, flat, green in the middle, and blue and orange at the edges," she says of her collection in her one-woman show at Gallery 139, Glorietta 4, third level, until Oct. 19.

"I like these colors so much. They remind me of the horizon, of the division of the sky and the land. I can’t get away from these colors," she says, adding that her love of nature was intensified when she was learning how to fly a plane in 2003.

She has also included a sculptural work, entitled Lovers, in the exhibit. Although in stoneware, Lovers has honey, yellow, and brown shades, "just like the skin of wood," she says.

Her closeness to nature gives her stoneware pieces subdued warmth and an unmistakable human touch.

Her pieces are unusual for someone who made big sculptural pieces when she was still a student at the University of the Philippines, where she finished her Bachelor of Fine Arts, major in sculpture in 2001.

As a scholar (for six weeks) at the Institute of Classical Architecture in New York in 2002, she was trained to look at the "big picture," such as urban design and community planning.

Back in Manila, she took up flying lessons at Airworks, for five months in 2003. "At that time, I was seeing nature in a bigger scale, from the top,"she adds.

But it was also like living dangerously on air. "From the top, with my Cessna 172, everything was small. I saw everyone and everything really small. I really had a hard time finding my runway," she recalls.

After 20 flights, when she was almost ready to land her plane, she decided to end her flying lessons. With her feet on the ground, she decided to enroll at the Pettyjohn-Mendoza School of Pottery in Makati, where she started how to "work with clay and start all over again with little art works."

"I used to do big art works. It’s only now that I’m making small things," she says, adding that she has become a "committed stoneware potter."

At the school of pottery, she also met Hadrian Mendoza, a master potter who eventually became her husband in January 2005. They now share a studio at the foot of Makiling in Calamba, Laguna.

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