Bacolod’s Art District welcomes The OPENSPACE
TWO years ago, a group of artists’ busy schedules slowed down. The time in lockdown gave them the opportunity to focus on helping their fellow artists fuel their creativity in their small community in Bacolod’s Art District.
In January, the Orange Project co-founder Charlie Co and his fellow local artists launched The OPENSPACE — Art District, an alternative art learning center in the 8,000-square-meter Art District.
OPENSPACE adds to the 12 existing art spaces in the area, including the galleries Orange Project, AAB Gallery+Cafe, Greyroom, Block17, and LM Gallery.
Mr. Co, who is also The OPENSPACE — Art District’s founder, had the idea of opening a new gallery with a vision of helping local artists and discovering talented individuals in visual arts.
“I’ve been dreaming of a space where you can teach, share your ideas about your practice,” Mr. Co told BusinessWorld in a Zoom interview.
“It’s open to not only painting or drawing but hopefully we can have that space for many forms of art,” he said, explaining the gallery’s name.
He added that the new gallery can also be used for printmaking workshops, and serve as a space for discussions in art criticism and art history.
“During the (COVID-19) pandemic, we didn’t use the white flag. We were fighting it in every way… We confronted it by teaching and sharing art in our community,” Mr. Co said. “This cannot happen without the community of artists supporting the idea.”
The gallery is mainly run by local artists Dennis Valenciano, Fred Orig, Leah Divino-Samson, and Leizel Lacsao-Dator.
“We’ve been planning to have this kind of space even before the pandemic, but we were busy with other projects. When the pandemic came, we had the chance to brainstorm,” Ms. Divino-Samson said in the same Zoom interview.
What had been a co-working space in the area was slowly transformed into a gallery in Sept. 2021. The OPENSPACE has a white-painted façade surrounded by sculptures and murals. It is an air-conditioned two-story building which alternately functions as a gallery and studio. It was officially launched on Jan. 12 with an inaugural art exhibition.
PROGRAMS AND COMMUNITY BUILDING
In line with the celebration of Arts Month this February, The OPENSPACE — Art District is holding weekly activities including nude/figure sketching and painting sessions, still-life drawings sessions, and art talks.
The artists have returned to the traditional route with the live sketching workshops.
“We want to encourage, na mas maganda ’yung live sketching (the live sketching is better) and then teach them also about anatomy. Nowadays, they think na if it’s nude, it’s bastos (indecent),” Ms. Divino-Samson said. “We want to teach the artists, especially the young ones, that you have to respect the human form.”
“We [want to] push more live sketching [sessions] instead of basing on prints from Google that the students copy,” Mr. Valenciano said.
The OPENSPACE also provides three months of comprehensive programs on figure drawing and portraiture, watercolor and coffee painting, acrylic painting, oil painting, and digital arts. One-month workshops and one-on-one tutorials for basic acrylic and watercolor are also offered. Apart from learning the techniques in the various mediums, the courses also cover how-to’s on material preparation, exhibition mapping, and work pricing.
The workshops culminate in an exhibit and the students can continue their practice by contributing to the community in the Art District.
“We are trying our best to reach out to young artists [and teach them] the value of art, in our culture, in our society. We’ve [already] been doing that, but we’ve intensified it during pandemic,” Mr. Co said.
“We’ve been collaborating as our way in helping the community cope with the pandemic. Now, the role of the artist becomes important,” he said.
The OPENSPACE — Art District is located at Lopue’s Mandalagan, Lacson St., Negros Occidental. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/TheOpenSpaceAD/, and Instagram @theopenspace_ad. — Michelle Anne P. Soliman
