By Diamay Klem Balacuit | Feature Writer
Vol. XCI No. 18
Mar. 6. 2020
This month, love is celebrated. It is a love that does not only focus on shallowness. It is a love that encompasses everything—a love that can repay one’s hard work and dedication.
Working out different pieces that are accompanied by sweat and tears, and sometimes messy life, often result in great things. These become their anchor to emulate their passion. It is the passion that burns inside their hearts in which no one can destroy. It is the love for the arts—a strong foundation for every artist to go on with their lives.
This February is their moment to be appreciated—a moment to be loved and be valued.
Unseen no more
Every person has his or her passion for doing. These are the things embedded in the depths of every heart’s desire. With the competition for survival, everyone tends to choose their passion in line with what is essential to the community—but not all of them would want this. There are these people who are passionate about what motivates people to continue living—the arts.
Literature, music, performing, and visual arts color the lives of everyone. But when someone chooses these as their passion in life, there’s this different frown bestowed to them—saying that they cannot survive the realities of life if they accept these as their way of survival despite the colors that these things brought.
The negative connotation that the people bring makes every one of them be afraid of expressing what they truly love. This brings them to a stage of feeling unworthy. Despite all of these, the odds are in their favor when the National Arts Month was declared—a celebration of appreciating their efforts in expressing their passions. The feeling of unworthiness changes to a sense of worthiness.
A Gift
The gift everyone can give is love. The sharing of this gift started when the month of February was declared as National Arts Month. It was intentionally made for artists—to recognize their sweat and tears in translating their thoughts and feelings to different art forms. These are the translations that would touch every human heart through beautifying with what it seems to be bland. With this celebration, the Dumaguete City Tourism Office created an event called Kisaw, a citywide month-long celebration of showcasing different art forms. One of the highlights of this event is called “Biyaheng Dumaguet-Art.” It is participated by the various local visual artists in which their chosen artworks are showcased by the city’s main transportation, the pedicabs.
One hundred pedicabs are chosen from this to become a public art gallery. The said art gallery is intentionally made for the commuting public to see and appreciate the works of the local visual artists’ community. It was made for them—for everyone to give value to the hard work of these talented people and to eradicate those judgments that make them feel useless completely.
Appreciate before it’s late
When the people gaze around, they see those different arts—ranging from the simple ones to the complex ones. Those things are what they hear, see, feel, taste, and touch. Those are the things that continue to bring colors to the lives of everyone. They made the people to always look for the bright side of everything—to cherish forever the things that express love and care.
Photo courtesy of Mary Judaline Flores Partlow
