The road to Erehwon is nowhere

MANILA, Philippines - No matter how many times you go to Erehwon Center for the Arts in old Balara, Quezon City, you are bound to miss a turn, the directions and street signs hazy and obscure whatever the weather, until finally by some stroke of luck or GPS you come across this imposing four-story building in the middle of a depressed area, a sort of oasis deep in the heart of nowhere. More than just pun or anagram, Erehwon is nowhere now here. And the rest is art and found art, a community of creative natives now on its fourth year sans frontiers.

Raffy Benitez, newly minted senior citizen, has been running the show with ample help from prime movers of the art scene as well as able support from local government, with a good number of exhibits and performances each calendar year, ranging from the conventional to the downright avant-garde. Staples are the volume series of group exhibits that kick off the season, and the yearly fiesta coinciding with the art manager’s birthday and featuring a tribute exhibit to a National Artist.

For five years the building was useless and just sat there after a labor strike forced closure of a panaderia that was the family’s main bread and butter at the time. Then it was later converted into Rapid lithographics, making signage, billboard designs, sexy calendars, assorted caratulas as well as nurturing a fledgling underground literary publishing scene with books by Alice Guillermo, Pete Lacaba, Butch Dalisay. It was guerrilla art and literature at its best, Erehwon a refuge of artists and safe house for writers in the hungry years.

In a manner of speaking the years are still hungry, and Benitez on any given day is still the busybody supervising or helping put to fruition one or other art project, be it the mural for the SAF 44 heroes of Mamasapano, or the group show Pumapapel which is the Kasama series volume 3.

There is a café and piano bar to boot on the ground floor mini patio, with ambient presence of Eman Lacaba and Nick Joaquin on checkered floor, something the late Behn Cervantes always dreamt about when it was still a grey November in his soul. Recently inaugurated is a dance studio in an upper floor, where budding ballerinas and other tiny dancers can begin strutting their stuff and well-pointed tutus. Somewhat sketchy still is the indie film collective, the video graphic arm of the center for documentation and collaboration with like-minded pioneering spirits. They are proud to announce…

Not to be missed, at the risk of skipping a pivotal part of your life, is the twilight hour on the topmost floor, where Leeroy New unleashed his rabid creativity with varied murals and the best view of Quezon City at dusk could be had, the only thing missing would be a call to prayer and the sound of minarets, especially on a Friday, but on any given day a cold beer and convivial company would be just as good, and far from being the loneliest time of day, twilight is nowhere in a nutshell – no longer day, not yet night, just call it limbo rock.

Don’t forget, behind one of those corridors are some bed spaces where artists in literal residence can crash not just for the night, but really stay till they thresh out their varied nervous breakdowns and come up with a novel or exhibit or philosophical treatise or two, all the while paying tribute to God and manna, or until god and manna in the form of Benitez’s good graces run out.

I’d seen the vice mayor of course cutting ribbons with assorted amiable folk in the vicinity, camera bulbs flashing, and the college brods emerging from the woodwork with memories of drunken days and full expectations of more wasted escapades to come. As they say, walang kakupas kupas.

And who can forget the Sipat Lawin’s performance ensemble a year ago that was not really a Valentine presentation, rather a hallmark of improv verging on confidence theater, or the symphony orchestra that did expert renditions in anticipation of the twilight hour. Presently in one section is a dual photo exhibit, one of them the wire photographer Patnubay Roque’s and his long years of clicking shutter pasa bilis. On the drawing board is the center’s hosting of an art anthropology exchange project with an American institutional gallery, featuring five locals and five US based Fil-Ams working on mural later this year, fiesta or no fiesta, a harbinger of more exciting and unpredictable art in old Balara.