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Free art prints for the nursery

The nursery project continues!

We received quite a few cards from friends when my baby was born (ah, what graciousness can be enabled by a postal system that actually works). I used to have them taped up to the wall next to her changing mat, and noticed that Tala really liked looking at them during diaper changers.

After reading that babies like faces, I decided to replace the cards with something a little more useful to her at this stage of development. The thought of real people’s faces pasted on my wall creeped me out, so I figured art and illustration was the way to go.

An online art project called Feed Your Soul helped me curate this mini art gallery of faces for Tala. This site features a free downloadable art print every month, from artists and illustrators invited to contribute by Jen Wallace of the blog Indie Fixx.

I first found this online art project after Googling Rinske Dekker, an illustrator and Etsy seller I discovered at Dutch Design Week. Rinske’s free art print from is on the right, next to the flower-crowned girl by Croatian illustrator Irena Sophia.

I loved the fairytale quality of this illustration by Laura Minco…

and the dreamy colors of this girl with her head in the clouds, by Laura Amiss. I don’t know why I gravitate more towards female figures… all our figurative paintings at home are of women, too.

With some of my favorite cards from friends, plus our friendly felt unicorn, Tala’s little art gallery is complete. She loves looking at it, and she’s even started trying to touch some of the prints. It will be fun to update it every now and then with fresh finds.

Though the project ended in 2011, the Feed Your Soul page has lots more free downloadable art prints to choose from (not all of them are this girly). So you can download and print your own mini art gallery, too!

2 Comments
Posted on May 9, 2013
Category: House & Spouse · Labels: art, baby, nursery

Countdown to Kleine Fabriek

A few months ago, I signed on as one of two booth managers representing the Philippines’ own googooandgaga at a trade fair called Kleine Fabriek in Amsterdam. (Read more about this art-driven children’s wear brand, and how I got involved here.) That means when I get back from Iceland, I’ll need to hit the ground running… because the day after I get back is the weekend of Kleine Fabriek!

I love receiving packages in the mail, don’t you? In the runup to Kleine Fabriek, I’ve been receiving them nonstop over the last few weeks. Angelique, googooandgaga’s brand partner in Europe, has thought of everything. From her, I received my half of a trade show kit that includes business cards, catalogs, invitations, double-sided tape, sample sizes, even a cute little dish for collecting business cards, and more.

From Audrey in Manila, I received samples of googooandgaga’s latest collection for boys…

… and for girls. Cue the baby pangs!

I also met up with Willem-Jan, my co-manager, which was a lot of fun. It turns out he lived in the Philippines for six months… and LOVED it! He stayed in Mandaluyong, near Jose Rizal University, which is as local as you can get—far from where most expats would dare to live and just minutes where my family used to live, in fact. Willem-Jan’s stories about being the strange white six-footer taking the jeepney and boxing at the Elorde gym on Shaw Boulevard cracked me up, and his evident enthusiasm and fondness for the Philippines warmed this Manila girl’s heart.

The ability to attract such enthusiasm, whether for art, children’s clothes, or the Philippines itself, speaks volumes about the kind of business googooandgaga is. I think it’s a reflection of the passion AJ and Audrey put into their product and brand—love and madness, as they would say.

I’m so excited for Kleine Fabriek, and proud that I get to be part of bringing an awesome Pinoy brand there!

P.S. How do you like the Instagram-ish feel of these pics? I’m trying out Rollip, a website that lets you apply vintage filters and effects to photos, no iPhone or Instagram required. Check it out and let me know if you like it.

4 Comments
Posted on July 1, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam, Manila Girl at Heart · Labels: Amsterdam, art, baby, googooandgaga, Kleine Fabriek

Scary statues in San Gimignano

As much as I liked my night visit to the medieval hilltop town of San Gimignano, there was another reason why braving the daytime hordes turned out to be worth it.

And it has to do with rust-covered naked dudes waiting just around the corner to surprise you.

If there’s anything that could make me glad to be surrounded by a busload of tourists, it was the sight of a naked man slathered in red in the shadows of a deserted medieval town. Believe me, it was far more reassuring in the daylight than it was at midnight!

These rusty naked men are part of an exhibit called Vessel by sculptor Antony Gormley. Beginning with 39 interconnected box structures in the Galleria Continua, the exhibit spills out into the streets of San Gimignano with six identical figures by Gormley—all of which are casts of his own naked body. Iiiiinteresting.

I saw only two of the six figures placed around the town, although I didn’t see the sculpture that was atop one of San Gimignano’s famous 13th century skyscrapers. A similar shock factor was involved in Gormley’s first exhibit of public art in New York, called Event Horizon. He perched 31 figures on rooftops and on the edges of buildings in Manhattan, freaking out passersby who thought they were seeing suicides in the making!

As public art goes, I would put these into the categories of striking, eerie and haunting. What would freak you out more: seeing a potential jumper on your way to work, or seeing a naked man covered in red in an empty street at midnight?

3 Comments
Posted on June 28, 2012
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: art, Europe, Italy, San Gimignano, travel, Tuscany

Essential Florence: 6 Sights You Shouldn’t Miss

Florence is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever visited. The entire city is a work of art, and completely brought the Renaissance to life for me. We stayed in a great Airbnb flat a short walk from the Centro Storico, where most of Florence’s cultural jewels are concentrated.

After just four days, I feel like I barely scratched the surface of this amazing city and wish I could’ve done more off the tourist trail. Having said that, the “tourist circuit” is deluged with visitors for a reason, and is truly worth every bit of time and money. Here’s my list of must-sees in Florence:

The Uffizi Gallery. Home to one of the largest and oldest private art collections in the Western word, the Uffizi Gallery contains masterpieces amassed by the powerful and wealthy (understatement of the century) Medici clan.

Works by the who’s who of Italian art, such as Titian, Caravaggio, Giotto and yes, all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all reside here. The true revelation for me here was Botticelli; though I felt as if I’d seen The Birth of Venus a hundred times in pop culture, nothing prepared me for the impact of the real thing. (Plus: you can get a lot closer to Venus than you can to Mona Lisa.)

Top tips: book tickets ahead at the Musei Firenze website to skip the queue, which can stretch for hours. The site is slow, but totally worth it. Allot at least three hours to soak up the full wealth and wonder of the Renaissance. Be prepared for Stendhal syndrome (as I experienced at the Vatican Museum); it’s best not to schedule anything visually heavy before or after. You’ll need your eyeballs rested for this one.

Also, the Uffizi Gallery has the best, biggest museum bookshop I’ve been in—not just for art and architecture, but also a great selection of kids’ literature, fiction and nonfiction.

[Read more...]

16 Comments
Posted on June 21, 2012
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: art, Europe, Florence, Italy, museums, travel, Tuscany

Notte Bianca in Florence: Art attack (3 of 3)

During Notte Bianca in Florence, the streets of the Centro Storico runneth over with people. It can get tiring slogging through the mob, as you can imagine from this scene at Piazza della Signoria…

… and outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of Florentine government during the Renaissance. Madness!

At about midnight, I decided I needed a rest from the crowd and the walking. So Marlon and I sat down in front of the Palazzo Strozzi to catch a break from the hordes.

Thus it was quite by accident that I discovered this magical sight inside the Palazzo Strozzi. If I hadn’t looked around the corner from where I was sitting, I never would have seen this. Tired as my feet were, I was drawn inside for closer look.

“Aerial Boundaries” by Italian artist Loris Cecchini was an installation created especially for the courtyard of the Palazzo Strozzi for Notte Bianca.

“Through its multiple reflecting surfaces, the work of art interacts with the reality surrounding it, reflecting the image not only of the Renaissance architecture, the sky and the natural light filtering through to the courtyard, but also of the observer himself as he or she looks up.”
(via CCC Strozzina)

The juxtaposition of old and new, graceful symmetry versus irregular geometry, the serenity of the courtyard in contrast to the activity and noise outside it, made this not only a sight to behold, but an experience to savor.

I felt as though I’d fallen into a pocket of night sky and starlight. Like I was breathing in something pure, clean and crisp… but through my eyes. It was very hard to leave.

I leave you these beautiful images until Monday. I hope that your weekend brings you something equally surprising, delightful, possibly even magical. Bonus points if it sparkles!

4 Comments
Posted on June 15, 2012
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: art, Europe, Florence, Italy, Notte Bianca, travel

5-minute portraits by Avier Koerier

How was your weekend? Mine was filled with color and art, thanks to two side-by-side events in Haarlem: Stripdagen (Comics Days) and the Illustratie (Illustration) Biennale.

At the Illustratie Biennale, we found illustration collective Avier Koerier at work doing portraits for the public.

Avier Koerier specializes in doing portraits on A4 paper—thus the name, which translates to”A4 Courier.” Their little corner was peppered with their work, and I was immediately drawn (no pun intended) to their quirky, humorous style…

… and their hand-lettered signs, which were also good practice for my Dutch. I can tell you, with no help from Google Translate, that the sign on the right reads: “You run no risk!”

Marlon and I had our portraits sketched in Singapore a few years back, and thought it was time to add Dutch-drawn portraits to our little collection. So we forked over €10 for four different portraits, and sat down for a portrait session that turned out to be fast, friendly and fun.

The experience was light and casual, not awkward or stiff as you might expect a portrait session to be. After all, not everything in life should be taken so seriously—especially not on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

I’m pleased to present the artists of Avier Koerier and their five-minute masterpieces. Which one do you like best?

[Read more...]

7 Comments
Posted on June 4, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: art, Haarlem, Marlon

Mucha on my mind

How was your Easter weekend? Mine was quiet and laid-back, made all the better by the company of a wonderful guest from home.

Just one last Prague post before I move on. I couldn’t leave Prague without having paid a visit to the Mucha Museum, which houses the major works of one of my favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha.

One of my favorite coloring books when I was a kid was my Art Nouveau stained glass coloring book from Goodwill Bookstore. To this day, I love Art Nouveau, and Mucha is Art Nouveau.

Dance (public domain)

When I started working at GMA, I considered it destiny that I ended up in an office where the glass walls of the pantry were plastered with a huge mural of Mucha’s Dance (above). I managed to transmit my Mucha fixation to my work partner Charlie, an insanely talented art director who also tended to obsession. Mucha’s Dance became the jump-off point for a slew of Art Nouveau-inspired outdoor and print materials for a big account that took over our lives. I wish I kept copies of Charlie’s work, it was all so gorgeous.

Mucha’s work is not high art, but it is beautiful. Though he painted, most of his work was fairly commercial: from theater posters to advertisements for champagne and milk to biscuit tins. Many examples of his work, like Spring, Grapes, the poster for Lorenzaccio, and The Slav Epic (all of which I saw at the museum) today are in the public domain.

It was amazing to come face to face with works that I had only seen as small pictures in books, and realize that they are actually HUGE. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed inside the Mucha Museum. So I had to settle for taking photos outside. That day, I was in “simple girl” mode with the Longchamp bag and ponytail, although I would hope the Marni for H&M top elevates it somewhat.

I took home a few postcards of my favorite works.

My favorite souvenir, though, was this handmade notebook. I love notebooks, so this was perfect for me. But it was also very unusual in that it harbored a few hidden treasures. Click on through to peek inside…

Details from Mucha pieces are stencilled and printed inside.

Random quotes are stamped inside. This one about writing called to me, naturally.

What I really loved, though were the pages from old Czech books, together with vintage Czech photos, that were bound with the blank pages. And at the very end, snail mail from the sixties.

It was the perfect purchase: Mucha’s art and a trip to a Prague flea market all bound up in one neat, locally handmade package. If only more museum shop souvenirs were this creative!

4 Comments
Posted on April 9, 2012
Category: Shopping & Finds, Wanderlust · Labels: art, Europe, museums, notebooks, paper, Prague, travel

See it, do it

I just found a collage that I made at the beginning of spring, when I first started getting back into my creative groove. I was done with it, but not quite.. until I saw these tiny hot air balloons in a magazine ad and decided to toss them into the mix at the very last minute.

Six months later…

Coincidence? Or is it just what happens when you put something out into the universe? You tell me. I’m just glad it worked out this way. As R. Kelly sings: “If I can see it, then I can do it!”

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Posted on November 15, 2011
Category: Creative Projects, Wanderlust · Labels: art, inspired, Turkey

From Borghese to Trevi

From a superturbocharged first day, our level of activity slowed down with each passing day we spent in Rome. We became less ambitious with each day’s itinerary, hitting the snooze button more times and dawdling longer and longer in our blessedly cool, thick-walled, marble-tiled apartment.

So by the time our fourth day rolled around, it was nearly lunchtime by the time we set off for Villa Borghese, the sprawling gardens-turned-public park that once belonged to the powerful and wealthy Borghese family. We stopped for lunch at the Piazza del Popolo.

The Galleria Borghese was the “party house” of Scipione Borghese, a nephew of Pope Paul V. Borghese used his wealth and influence to amass a truly stunning collection of art. I was excited to finally see the works of artists I had only seen in books, such as Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael and Rubens.

Tickets for the museum need to be reserved well in advance over the phone. An Italian colleague of Marlon’s had helped us call the Galleria Borghese to reserve tickets for that day’s 1 to 3pm time slot. The administration is strict and will shoo everyone out after the allotted 2 hours are over.

The Galleria Borghese is simply jawdropping from the first step in. Unfortunately, photography is forbidden—but if it wasn’t, I’d be all over it with my camera.

Scipione Borghese was one of the earliest patrons of master sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini, whose signature is all over Rome. It was in Galleria Borghese that I came face to face with the true genius of Bernini. His Apollo and Daphne is, without exaggeration, the most beautifully sculpted piece of art I’ve ever seen in my life. I must have spent half an hour just looking at it, and could have easily stayed longer.

His Pluto and Proserpina in the next room is completely different, but just as captivating.

Photos from the Galleria Borghese website—they simply don’t do them justice!

After our museum visit, Marlon and I decided to just take it easy and cool off under the shade of the trees around the Villa Borghese.

Our curiosity was piqued by the small, funny “tandem bike” buggies that rattled by us every now and then. “That looks like fun!” Marlon said. So we had to give it a try.

The buggies turned out to be electric riscios (rickshaws), that, along with regular bikes, can be rented on an hourly basis.

Marlon and I rattled around the park for a good 45 minutes or so until we spotted something so tempting, we just had to park our riscio, get down and enjoy it.

A public fountain! After four days of broiling heat and constant walking, I can’t tell you what a treat it was to perch on the lip of this fountain and dip my poor footsies into this clear, ice-cold water. It is a miracle of Rome that the water in its fountains is always shockingly cold no matter how hot it gets.

I was obviously not the only one who felt this way. But I just couldn’t bring myself to take it to the next level!

Refreshed and rejuvenated, we returned the riscio and headed to the Piazza Spagna, or the famous Spanish Steps, starting all the way at the top for a sweeping view…

… stopping for a photo op, naturally…

… until we ended up all the way at the bottom, with the rest of the 48,000 tourists and their mothers who were there. #mobbed

Everyone was taking photos of this fountain just because it was there, so I did too. #sheep

Just a few streets away was the great granddaddy of all fountains, the Trevi. I didn’t expect it to be so… BIG!

The Trevi Fountain was completely mobbed, too. The crowd was overwhelming, so I just found an empty spot to sit down for a while before even taking a single picture. I may have lost count of how many people did the “tossing a coin into the fountain” pose, but I give all them an O for Originality!

3 Comments
Posted on October 5, 2011
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: art, Europe, Italy, museums, Rome, travel

Night at the Musei

Just for peak season this year (Easter till early fall), the Vatican Museums opened their doors to the public on Friday nights. What used to be a very expensive privilege became a brilliant way for Marlon and I to beat the debilitating daytime heat and experience the Museums in an unusual way.

So I signed us up for a two-hour night tour of the highlights with an official Musei Vaticani guide. At €24, tickets from the Musei Vaticani website itself were the cheapest ones around. We were lucky to nab tickets only days before our visit.

Our official Vatican guide, Alexandra, was not only extremely knowledgeable and thorough, she also had amazing voluminous hair despite looking rather dead on her feet at 10pm.

The Musei Vaticani house the vast art collection of the Catholic Church, a treasure trove that’s been amassed over centuries.

The magnitude of the collection is mind-boggling in itself. The Museum’s various galleries (only some of which are open at night) hold everything from ancient sculptures and priceless paintings, to more unusual things like maps and tapestries.

Not all the art was centuries old. We only just breezed through the contemporary section, but I glimpsed large-scale works by the likes of Dali and Matisse, among many others.

If you think the art is overwhelming, the decoration and ornamentation of the galleries themselves will make your head spin. By the end of the evening, I literally felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out (it’s a very… interesting feeling). There is art in every possible nook and cranny, masterpieces everywhere from floor…

… to ceiling.

My friend Jec asked, “Is it more mind-boggling than Versailles?” I snorted. The Vatican Museums make Versailles look positively minimalist.

And yes, I had to wrestle with that a bit. After my very emotional afternoon at St. Peter’s, thinking about the value of the art and—oh, you know this one—how much good it can do for the suffering of the world brought me crashing down.

I know any of us in such a position to amass all these these treasures would keep them for as long as we possibly could. But this is an all too human instinct from a Church that professes to be divine. I wonder if a Musei Vaticani auction is something we will ever see in our lifetime.

Since they are not exactly easy to sell, the masterpieces that are fixed to the buildings themselves are somewhat easier to think about.

These are some of the Vatican Museums’ greatest treasures: ceilings and walls adorned with frescoes by Raphael.

I was glad to have my wide-angle lens, but these pictures cannot even come close to doing these ceilings justice.

How Raphael brought theology, history and even mathematics and philosophy together in his art was simply genius.

At the point where my eyeballs were about to fall out of their sockets, we entered the world’s most famous chapel with the world’s most famous ceiling. I managed to snap this photo before I saw the sign forbidding photography.

It’s just as well that photography is not allowed; sometimes we forget to experience things with our own eyes, and not through a viewfinder or lens.

So I just threw my head back and stayed that way, eyes glued to the ceiling, for about 20 whole minutes. I tried to drink in as many details as I could. I simply didn’t want to forget. And I don’t think I ever will.

3 Comments
Posted on October 3, 2011
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: art, Europe, Italy, museums, Rome, travel

Viewing: art

Free art prints for the nursery

Countdown to Kleine Fabriek

Scary statues in San Gimignano

Essential Florence: 6 Sights You Shouldn’t Miss

Notte Bianca in Florence: Art attack (3 of 3)

5-minute portraits by Avier Koerier

Mucha on my mind

See it, do it

From Borghese to Trevi

Night at the Musei

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