BINMALEY, Pangasinan — A 26-year-old artist from this town won the grand prize for the most coveted Maningning Miclat Art Awards 2018 with her artwork made from milkfish bones.
Jessica Lopez collected the fish bones from milkfish deboners in Dagupan City and placed them together on 48 x 36 inches plywood with black background.
Lopez said her artwork, ‘Motion of Life’, defines a celebration of humanity.
“Yung ‘Motion of Life’ ibig sabihin nun ay sayaw ng buhay. Na kahit gaano katinik, tuloy pa rin ang pagsayaw (The ‘Motion of Life’ defines the essence of life itself. No matter how difficult life is, we must endure and persevere),” she said in an interview on Friday.
Since childhood, Lopez said she noticed her affinity towards the arts, already winning various competitions related to poster-making, literary graphic design, and painting.
However, in 2014, she started focusing on artworks made from fish bones, wherein she transfers her emotions and concepts in a form of conceptualism, abstract and mixed medium.
“Since then, I was known as ‘Lady Fishbone’,” said Lopez, now a mother to a four-year old.
Lopez’s artwork was among the 62 online entries that qualified to the 2018 Maningning Miclat Art Competition, and among those 18 shortlisted entries.
The shortlisted entries were then sent to an exhibit at the Far Eastern University (FEU), alongside the exhibit sale of artworks by previous winners.
Being the grand prize winner, Lopez received cash, a Julie Lluch Dalena Sculpture trophy and a Maningning Miclat book collection, during the awarding ceremony at the FEU auditorium on Wednesday.
Lopez’s artworks will be featured in a solo exclusive exhibit at the District Gallery in Quezon City.
The Maningning Miclat Art Award is an annual national competition, which aims to herald a new breed of young artists in memory of the award-winning artist, poet, and educator Maningning Miclat. (Ahikam Pasion/PNA)
