Apaga La Luz* - Homage to Juan

With these new works, I pay homage to an ancestor: Juan Arellano, Lolo Juan, younger brother of Papa's papa, Arcadio.. He was better known as the architect of the Post Office and other Commonwealth buildings. His architecture was mostly Classical but his painting mostly Impressionistic- and, not a few of them were wild, rife with riddles and replete with sexuality. Lolo Juan had always been known as the family's Don Juan after all.

This was a clan-destined clandestine exercise, like sitting at the foot of the master and learning the ropes, but with him no longer there- only his nudes in watercolour and in oil. Ideally I would've loved to show our pieces side by side, like a tandem show where I imagined we had sat together in front of the naked model- he painting and I sculpting away. Instead here are his nudes- enfleshed. I added the third dimension and offer the tactile.

It's been quite an educational experience translating painting into sculpture. The colors that added so much warmth and passion are now stone white, cast marble reliefs. And that line that so defined that curve disappears once you but move. I reveled in the beauty that Lolo Juan had created, and learned so much if only from the anatomy lessons that had to be carefully reviewed with his odd twists of the human form. I've looked into mythology and other cultures, traveled far and wide in search of eros only to find it at home, running through my veins.

Very few are now privileged to see the paintings in the original, so I have brought them back in the flesh for more people to see and appreciate. We reconnect to the past, learn from it and pass it on.

*“Apaga la luz, porque me molesta” [Turn off the light because it bothers me]