By HAZEL P. VILLA
WHEN high school teacher Mary Rose Adelle Pacificar left Iloilo City in the Philippines in June last year to be a foreign language assistant in a university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, she never imagined herself becoming a watercolor artist as well.
While working as the first Foreign Language Teaching Assistant for Filipino at the University of Michigan, she read a call for submissions for artworks for the Ecumenical Center and International Residence (ECIR) Art Nite 2013. With the encouragement of friends—such as Amina Rizwan, a jewelry designer and Fulbright scholar at Cranbrook Academy of Art—28-year-old Pacificar decided to give it a try.
Pacificar co-organized the ECIR Art Nite 2013 that opened last March 25 and ran for a week to “encourage fellow ‘artists-in-residence’ to share their works and help those who are ‘artistically-challenged’ to appreciate art.”
The exhibit featured the digital works, photographs, sketches, poetry and animation of Pacificar and five other exhibitors. Pacificar exhibited five artworks that were reproductions of her watercolor paintings and illustrations from 2004 to the present.
“People preferred my works, especially the ‘Mother and Child’ and ‘The Boy Who Lost Its Shell’,” says Pacificar, a cum laude graduate of Bachelor of Secondary Education major in English from the West Visayas State University College of Education in Iloilo City, Western Visayas region.
ECIR Art Nite 2013 is an offshoot of the success of her first exhibit, called “Art Out Loud Exhibit,” done with other students and faculty last February 17 to March 2 and sponsored by the University of Michigan Hillel.
She held her third exhibit, “Student and Staff Art,” at the University of Michigan’s Clark Library last April 22, featuring the same paintings she exhibited at the ECIR Art Nite 2013.
“My work is about me and my two friends, and our relationship with the tropical sun because all of us are from Southeast Asian countries (Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia). I am not sure if they feel the same way as I do, but I miss the intense colors of the tropics. I learned to love the muted grey and white colors of winter but the more I enjoy it, the more I am reminded of home,” says Pacificar.
“Back Home,” one of her exhibited artworks, is an oil painting on banig or woven mat. It depicted her longing for home with yellow and orange “as the nearest forms of energy that I can associate with the tropical sun.”
Pacificar has been using watercolor and watercolor pencils for illustrations since high school. While admitting to not being well-versed with the techniques in a formal way, she says she is comfortable with the medium and has recently been using colored pens.
She started doing children’s book illustrations as a student at the Special Program for the Arts of the Iloilo National High School to match the collection of short stories she wrote as a graduation requirement.
Pacificar, a Fulbright Fellow, paints when commissioned for gifts and teaching materials. She also produces images from random conversations and instant story collaborations with friends and colleagues.
As a teaching assistant, Pacificar helps her supervisor prepare handouts for their classes, does some encoding and research work, and teaches Filipino language and culture when required to do so. When not attending her two academic classes, Pacificar indulges her artistic side.
Pacificar already has her admirers like Chenling Chan from Taiwan, who is also an ECIR resident.
“My daughters and I like Adelle’s arts very much,” Chan says. “From her works, you can see the kind, beautiful, considerate and dream-like heart in her. I wish my kids can learn from her … tender and delicate painting.”
“We’d love to have her collections in our house, and (I) believe her arts can really make my room shine. They are really beautiful!” Chan adds.
For Jake Dingman, a student of Languages, Science & Arts at the University of Michigan, Pacificar’s paintings are intriguing, especially the figurative water colors.
“Adelle’s use of color is refreshingly unique and brings a distinct life and personality to the characters she paints. In fact, each picture brings a full world to mind. Although I’ve always thought that her illustrations would be right at home along with text in a children’s book, I think they’re actually so complete that they function as stories by themselves,” Dingman says.
For a reluctant artist, Pacificar feels her Michigan stint has given her the courage to pursue her passion for the arts—that is, even after she returns to Iloilo City this month.
In the future, she plans to team up with creative writers, educators and artists in creating more illustrations.