Antonio “Babbu” Alunan Wenceslao and I went to the same art school in college. Since then, we’ve done group exhibitions, concerts, conferences, workshops, outdoor events, and teach art.
YMK: How did your art practice evolve after graduating from art school at the University of the Philippines?
Babbu Wenceslao: Art and art practice to me have definitions of their own, including their own progressions. It’s always a challenge to check on their footprints. But early on, I was always drawn to teaching, even before finishing art school, we conducted the Summer Art Workshop which was hosted by Lab-as Restaurant, and the generous patronage of the late Vicente Fuentes.
We ran the workshop for about 20 summers since there was no formal training in the arts in Dumaguete back then. We taught creativity for kids, and basic drawing and painting for adults.
Immediately after art school, I joined Silliman University — while you took your MA in UP Diliman — teaching FA 51 (Art Appreciation) which I did for a couple of years.
So my engagement with art, you could say, still leans heavily in the practice of teaching the craft.
YMK: What is the usual subject matter that you give attention to? Why?
BW: My works, I believe, are a bit simple, but they revolve around several contemporary issues and multiple subjects from the environment to aesthetics.
But then again primarily, my initiatives are always drawn with the intent, and in the circumstance and objective of amplifying collective visual consciousness. This I believe is a fundamental principle and purpose of art.
As a people, our icons are drawn in the faint and blurred outlines of collective doubt, shrouded in the shadows of our colonial position, and the effective mechanisms of a western dominated media. It is in the realm of art where as a culture we can possibly re-trace and reinforce, create and elevate the very shape and form of own images.
Art allows us the ability to visually refine and define our aspirations, and differentiate ourselves as a culture in the context of contemporary life.
YMK: What compelled you to create a Fine Arts program in college, and eventually open up in Foundation University?
BW: I grew up surrounded by a lot of creative people, mostly writers and a couple of painters, colleagues and students of my mother [Filipina poet and multi-Palanca awardee Merlie Alunan] whose conversations always drift into how Dumaguete as a place is always seen and felt as familiar and personal geography, a haven nurturing to the creative mind and warm to the artistic spirit. Somehow, I kept this thought of the City as an ideal place to study the arts.
When I joined Silliman in 1996, there was an ongoing initiative to open a painting program under the School of Music, so I wrote and completed the BFA curriculum proposal, it was approved by the SU Academic Council under Dean Dr. Susan Suarez, but it was eventually deferred from implementation by a departmental change in administration. 
On an early morning mountain bike trail ride to Valencia one time, I disclosed the prospect to Architect Dean Sinco who was opening an Architecture program at Foundation University. I wrote a new curriculum proposal, and the first Fine Arts school in the Province was opened that very year, 2006.
Now we have two art schools in this small City.
As Architect Gerard Uymatiao would tell me, “Be careful with what you ask for because you might get it.”
YMK: How do you mix music and poetry in your visual arts practice? How are they intertwined?
BW: They are all quite confusingly intertwined. Music is very important to me. I listen to a lot of genres. I’ve read mostly my mother’s poems, and those that she feeds me, and they are all inspiring but I personally do not do poetry. I’ve never formally trained in music but I think I can write a song, and play a few chords in the guitar, but the lyrics, however, are more prose than poetry. Music and the visual arts are all equal creative pursuits, part and parcel of the entire package, or should I say ‘baggage’?
YMK: How do you think is the study of studio arts relevant in an age that is driven by computers, smart phones, and tablets?
BW: It has never been as important. Art, to a large extent, is derivative, globally. We have never experienced this as we are now. Originality is a patent. But the demand for image, its utility, and access have grown exponentially. We partially think and speak English as a colonized culture, but in the virtual world, imagery has become the terminology, the new language of global psycholinguistics.
Human cognition and understanding is a visual process, this has not changed since our earliest ancestors. In this information age, our visual faculty has become even more important.
A culture’s ability to visualize and envision will determine its capacity to cope, anticipate, and eventually overcome. Which is why we need leaders with a keen sense of vision, and a critical eye for finding visual solutions.
The studio arts as a discipline in aesthetics and imagery trains the eye and the mind in the creation and purpose of imagery. It is significant in the sense that it provides our culture the ability to illustrate and visually configure its own aspirations, and provide the capacity to participate in the continuous development and understanding of human culture.
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Author’s email: artistbyartist@gmail.com
