A semi-retired businesswoman, an emerging artist, mother of four grown-up children, a late-bloomer in the field of visual arts, she embarked on a new career as a visual artist by accident.

What are the usual themes in your work?

I don’t usually have a theme unless the exhibit has a theme that I have to follow.

Tell us about your latest project/s or anything you are currently working on.

Currently, I’m working on my big piano to be exhibited at Eastwood Mall on Feb. 29-March 8. It is an exhibit with a group of really amazing artists but my work will be the centerpiece of the exhibit. Also, I’m working on my 6th solo exhibit scheduled at the end of March with a gallery, another exhibit in June for the Tokyo International Art fair where I will be coming out with a technique that I’ve never done before, also working on some commissions, a glass installation for a major resort outside Metro Manila and other companies.

How do you study or research for a project?

I have magazines that I bought in Corning, New York when I studied there. I usually check the internet and look at sculptures regardless of the medium and if something interests me, I translate the design to glass in my own version.

What are the processes involved in your art-making?

Glassmaking, as I know, involves 3 major processes which, in the glassworker’s language, are described as Cold, Warm and Hot.
Warm glassmaking is glass casting where billets or small pieces of glass are melted into a mold to take its shape. Hot glassmaking is glass blowing where melted glass is blown, cut and shaped using glassblowing tools and a hot furnace continuously burns to keep the glass In its liquid form while the glassblowers create their shapes. Warm and Cold glass are the processes/techniques that I use. But I seldom do warm glass or glass casting due to my limited resources and tools. Setting up a warm glass workshop is very expensive and tedious and is entirely different from what I have now because it involves using glass kilns and other expensive machines and materials.
Cold or Coldworking is the process that I Mostly use. It’s called coldworking because we don’t use fire and heat to shape our glass. Instead, we use water, wet tools, grinding, carving, shaping and polishing our glass using wet grinders and wet polishing tools. I also use lamination in coloring and putting the designs in my glass. Lamination means using a sturdy adhesive specifically made for glass, to glue pieces of glass together to achieve the desired finish.

When working for an exhibition, how do you know which work to include?

First I consider the theme and my audience and then the suggestions of the gallery

Name some of the artists who have influenced you in your practice.

My teachers at Corning Museum of glass, Martin Rosol, Pavel Novak and Jiyong Lee for coldworking. Jack Storms, John Kuhn and Toland Sands are great inspirations, Peter Bremers and Peter Mandl do glass casting which have inspired me to make my own Coldworked versions of their works.

Among your works, which of them could be called your favorites?

My early works which were influenced a lot by Jack Storms, the pianos which is a reflection of my crazy personality, and the human figures inspired by Peter Mandl

What is your fondest childhood memory?

I have many fond memories of my childhood but I remember 2 instances that, looking back, I would consider, were signs that I’d be in a career related to the arts in the future although I would never have thought of as signs before. I would more aptly describe as memories of my youth coz I was no longer a child then. First, when my dad commissioned a painter to do my parents’ wedding picture. When the guy came to show the finished work to my dad, I told the artist that the figures lacked proportion and that he should correct the mistake. He tried to correct what I pointed out to him until I got impatient and asked to borrow his paint and brush so I can demonstrate to him the corrections I wanted. I ended up finishing the painting for him . The 2nd instance was when my parents asked a wood carver to make our front door . I had a design that I wanted him to copy but he just couldn’t understand my instructions so I took his hammer and chisel and carved the design on the wood myself to his surprise. I told him to do what I did and gladly he was able to replicate my work. That door still stands at the entrance of our ancestral house to this day.