The latest offering from Galleria Camaya is a mother-daughter exhibit of the exquisite Filipino embroidery called Calado, a very fine and delicate form of Filipino embroidery done on an even more delicate silk-like material, Pina, which is derived from the fiber of the crown of pineapples. It is believed that the embroiderers (called “burdareros” locally) learned this craft from the Spanish nuns in the 1600s, but there is evidence of the earlier existence of embroidery metal needles that have been imported, arising from trade with India and China.
ARACELI LIMCACO DANS
Araceli Limcaco Dans, considered the Grande Dame of Philippine Painting, has been painting for over 80 years. The now-95-year-old artist started drawing as an 8-year-old and was enrolled as the only child in an adult class under the tutelage of Angela Fernandes at Santa Rosa College. During the Japanese occupation in World War II, the twelve-year-old Dans helped her family make ends meet by drawing propaganda comics and, subsequently, while a high school student at the Philippine Women’s University, by drawing commissioned works for the American soldiers. Thereafter, as a senior high school student, she was accepted by the then Dean of Fine Arts, Fernando Amorsolo, to the School of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines. She was able to fully graduate after three years instead of the required four years. Amorsolo even passed some of the commissioned work orders that he didn’t have time to complete.
Ms. Dans has had over 100 group and solo art exhibits in the Philippines and abroad, including a retrospective show at the Ayala Museum in 2011. She paints inanimate objects, where she makes them glow with an inner life.
She created a truly prodigious body of work comprising paintings and sculptures, which she has incredibly accomplished in spite of having raised ten children, all successful in their chosen careers. She continues to paint to this day, is dedicated to continuing to improve her craft, and is eager to pass on her skills as an artist and a teacher. She has been considered a candidate as a National Artist many times and has reaped various awards, including the CCP’s Centennial Awards, the Citizen’s Award for Television, and Mariang Maya Award.
MARIA ARACELI (“Marcy”) DANS LEE
Maria Araceli “Marcy” Dans (b. 1954) holds both a Master of Arts in Art History and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines.
She worked as a creative and art director for two private companies after university before becoming a faculty member at the University of the Philippines, both in Diliman and Mindanao, for over three decades and subsequently becoming Dean at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of the Philippines, Mindanao, where she eventually took early retirement in 2018.
Marcy is better known as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, having been published in the Philippines and abroad. Her stories, illustrated in watercolour, have focused mainly on the retelling of Filipino folklore and legends.
It was only in the latter part of 2019 that Marcy quietly took it upon herself to continue the legacy of her mother, Araceli Limcaco Dans, the master of calado painting in the Philippines, transmuting the same watercolour medium she used as a children’s book illustrator into paintings of fine Filipino lace embroidery. Unable to return to her Davao City home since the start of the pandemic lockdown in the Philippines in March 2020, Marcy found herself painting instead, in the same studio as the master, her 91-year-old mother, whose legacy she devotes her time to continue. Mother and daughter have grown to become each other’s best and worst critics.
It is unavoidable that the mother-daughter paintings will always be compared with each other. However, Marcy’s works can proudly stand next to those of her mother’s and complement the beauty in each other’s creations.
