Opening Night!

I just got back from the opening night of FOReveRENEver, the 18th annual exhibit of the children’s illustrators’ group I’m part of, Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan (Ang INK). It’s a tribute to Rene Villanueva, (1954-2007) prolific writer of Filipino children’s stories, playwright, and even a television writer for Batibot, once the Philippines’ local counterpart to Sesame Street.

This exhibit is quite special to INK, as several of our members have illustrated his Rene Villanueva’s work. In fact, the first book I illustrated, Ang Alamat ng Atis (Legend of the Custard Apple) was written by Rene Villanueva and more than anything, the fact that he wrote it convinced me to take on the project.

I actually met Rene once, at the publishing house, where the general manager introduced us and told him I did the illustrations for his book. I regret not being able to talk at length with him, as they were off to a meeting, but I’m honored all the same for the opportunity to have illustrated his work.

For this exhibit, we chose several stories (written in Filipino) from Rene Villanueva’s column in the now-defunct Diario Filipino and illustrated them, 2-3 to a story to form a visual narrative.

Of course, when the stories were handed out, I raced towards grabbing the story Aklat, Aklat, Aklat” (Books, Books, Books), which is about a man obsessed with books (erm, why does that sound familiar?).  I partnered up with INKies Tin and Ray-ann (who often comments here, and is a book lover like me! Squee), who worked on the first two parts of the story while I got the last third.

The entirety of my artwork was created from the remains of one of the books in my collection that was damaged in the flood (thank you Serj for the suggestion!).

It was a great night, and I’m writing a feature about it for Manila Bulletin (for next Wednesday), so the rest of the story will have to wait, but you can check out the event photos in the album I just uploaded.

For local readers, FOReveRENEver runs until November 29 at the CCP Little Theater Lobby, so be sure to check it out!