Three Cebuano Artists: Raymund Fernandez, J. Karl Roque and Javy Villacin

Three Cebuano Artists: Raymund Fernandez, J. Karl Roque and Javy Villacin

Professors at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Cebu College (UPVCC) Fine Arts Program, Raymund Fernandez, J. Karl Roque and Javy Villacin are also active exhibiting artists. They were participants of the José Joya Awards and Competition in their undergraduate years where Karl Roque was consistently awarded from 1979 to 1987. They were the people who practically put up the first Mindworks. Mindworks was born in the class where Raymund Fernandez was a student of Prof. Javy Villacin back in the early 80’s.

The three saw the Fine Arts Program from its infancy to relative maturity as students and subsequently as members of the faculty. They opened possibilities for young minds as art educators while animating Cebu art scene as artists and creative collaborators.

Some of their works that have been exhibited are shown here. Their works embody various ideas they distilled to come up with their own version. The manner with which they synthesized indigenous culture with western art instruction illustrates their maturity as artists.

In December 2001, Prof. Raymund Fernandez’s Alpiler: a contemplation was exhibited at the SM City Cebu Art Center. Alpiler is the Visayan term for safety pin. Prof. Fernandez’s involvement with alpiler began when he was handling an art workshop for senior students. The result of a welding machine demonstration is an alpiler a meter long that he stuck to a tree in the UPVCC campus. For Prof. Fernandez:
[Alpiler] is an object that is fast going into obsolescence. It is now slowly being displaced by Velcro and disposable diapers… It is an object that obviously suggests pain and danger. We were taught always to handle this with great respect. Much of this paradoxical nature is reflected on the physical configuration of the alpiler. The softness of the head, which is designed to coddle the sharp needle, says to me much about reality and life.

Prof Fernandez envisions alpiler as an on going project. The exhibition may be in the gallery this time but it could go far beyond that in the future.

Prof. J. Karl Roque, on the other hand, believes that paintingthat painting has two specific purposes: “the dissemination of information and the record of events of a particular era or time wherein an artist reflects what he sees in his surroundings. Basically, a painting reflects an artist’s ideology, beliefs or sentiments.” And he clearly communicates his sentiments about the environment in his paintings. He expresses this sentiment by showing nature’s beauty “as how it should be for our children to inherit” he says, rather than depicting environment’s destruction. He wants his paintings to serve as a wake up call for everyone to help take care of the environment lest the destruction because of ignorance, greed and apathy.

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