THE ARTIST & HIS WIFE

JOEL EUGENIO EPISTOLA FERRARIS

Filipino Artist/Muralist

Joel Eugenio Epistola Ferraris was born in Iloilo City, Philippines, on April 5, 1959 into a family of self-taught artists.

The eldest among the five siblings, he started to hone his skills at a very young age and joined his first art competition at the age of 9. From then onwards, he and his siblings reaped awards by joining art competitions and took part in art exhibitions every year.

After studying Architecture at the University of the Philippines, he went fulltime as an artist. Trained and skilled in painting because of the numerous portraits he did in the past, he was commissioned by GUESS? USA in the Philippines to do a 100 feet long mural in line with the apparel company’s Anti-AIDS campaign that was co-sponsored by the Department of Health of the Philippines. The late actress and GUESS? USA model Anna Nicole Smith unveiled the mural “ARMOR OF GOD” which was displayed on the facade of Rustan’s in Makati, Philippines in 1994.

In 1996, Joel moved to Hong Kong to join his wife who works as an IT Consultant. He joined the Hong Kong Mural Society after painting “Lek Yuen Jewel”, his very first mural designed for the Hong Kong Housing Authority. A 66-foot mural depicting marine life, this vibrant piece of public art won the 2nd best mural award in a publicly judged competition.

Soon Joel became the mural society’s vice chairman and took part in the group’s more than 100 mural projects all over the territory, including the painting of Hong Kong’s giant mural in Tsing Yi Island with compatriot Artist Arnel Agawin.

In a two-man art exhibition “Rapid Reflections” at the newly opened John Batten Gallery in 1997, Joel teamed-up with another Filipino artist, Justo Cascante. This opportunity introduced him to Hong Kong’s art scene, especially when he was interviewed on CNN International.

A series of art projects ensued and his cooperation with his artist compatriots led to the start of the Philippine Arts Festival, an annual Filipino arts and cultural event in Hong Kong. He also constantly joins multinational group exhibitions like the ArtWalk, the Gambling Show and CityPoetry organized by John Batten. At the same time, Joel is represented by the John Batten Gallery in Hong Kong.

Despite his diminishing penchant for art competitions, his painting titled NEOPHYTE was chosen among the Top 30 Finalist of the first Sovereign Art Prize in 2004 in Hong Kong, while his younger brothers continue to garner awards in the Philippines.

After his solo shows in the Philippines and Hong Kong, Joel was invited to the USA by the University of Pittsburgh in Bradford, Pennsylvania, in 2006 to put up a solo show titled “FREE FLOW” as part of the Spectrum Series program of the University of Pittsburgh in Bradford. Being the first Filipino invited to this prestigious multicultural and multinational event, he exhibited what amounted to a retrospective of his works, revealing his true nature as an artist not afraid to discover new styles and innovations in the discipline called art.

For the past decades of art-making, Joel E. Ferraris finds fulfillment when he introduced several original techniques and styles starting from devising ways to do art in his home province in the Philippines way back in the late 70s by using indigenous materials and continued to explore the possibilities of newly found objects, mediums and his newly developed styles in Hong Kong in the new millennium.

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“To me, a free flowing life means to be guided by the Divine Light and to swim into that life-giving water in which one is able to gently hurdle or evade life's many obstacles while maintaining a certain balance in one's career, family life, social responsibilities and most of all moral and spiritual obligations.” Joel E. Ferraris

THE CANVASES ARE READY!!!

TO THE GALLERY

Here's the way to the gallery at 27-37 D'Aguilar St. in Lan Kwai Fong




The entrance to Winner Building



The SARASEN Gallery 5th Floor Winner Building in Lan Kwai Fong

GETTING READY

The four large canvas panels are ready for transport. Here I am waiting for the van to arrive.

LARGE CANVAS PANELS' PREPARATIONS

The four large blank canvases are prepared in my studio in Tsuen Wan. They are first stretched on the wall and painted with several coatings of gesso before attaching to canvas stretchers. These will then be transported to the gallery in Lan Kwai Fong.

I always make it a point to stretch the canvas on flat and smooth plywood walls, spray with water evenly and allow to dry. This will prepare the surface neatly and smoothly without wrinkles for the gesso application. And just like buying and using pre-coated canvases, this approach will allow the canvas to be neatly wrapped around the wooden canvas stretchers especially when some people prefer not to use frames when hanging paintings on the wall.

JUNE 3-24, 2008 at SARASEN GALLERY, HONG KONG

Now comes the 3^RD PHILIPPINE ARTS FESTIVAL HONG KONG, June 2008:

Kindly visit the website to see all of the events:

http://www.philartsfesthk.com/

In line with this arts and cultural event I am going to have an exhibition .

TINY STUDIO +: Filipino Artist J O E L E. F E R R A R I S
in a live painting performance from June 3, 2008 until June 24, 2008

Launching date: June 3, 2008 (6:00 p.m.)
Closing Party: June 24, 2008 (6: 00 p.m.)

For details and regular updates please visit

http://ferrarismuralist.blogspot.com/

This solo exhibition and performance are all about my experiences here in Hong Kong as a visual artist from the Philippines forced by circumstances to live and do art inside “luxurious boxes” in this world city.

On the opening date of the exhibition, I will start to paint randomly small images on several large blank canvas panels inside this art gallery. The exhibition venue setting is reminiscent of my first experience in doing art here in Hong Kong when I arrived in 1996 and, likewise, of how I worked on very large mural projects for clubhouses given the limited space I had in my studio in an industrial building.

The challenge is how to produce these pieces given these circumstances and put them altogether as one later, view them from the best distance to see the hidden meaning and image and transport them to wherever a transient artist or art collector would like to go, and to let the whole combined art pieces mutate and adapt to the given situation depending on the new place of residence.

On the closing date, guests will be seeing the mural as a finished art piece. A possible relocation of the whole mural to another bigger and more spacious venue, preferably in a public place, will allow viewers to see the final hidden image that completes the message of this large art piece.

The rest of the story are found here: http://ferrarismuralist.blogspot.com/

SARA SEN GALLERY & STUDIO PLUS

27-37, D’ Aguilar Street, Winner Building, 5th Flr-A, Lan Kwai Fong, Central, Hong Kong

Tel: (852) 2525 6984

Email: gallery.sarasen@gmail.com

Web: www.sarasene.com

COMING SOON!!!!

IT RUNS IN THE BLOOD: The Ferraris Artists Group Show

Opens July 4, 2008 (6:00 p.m.)

SARA SEN GALLERY & STUDIO PLUS

See more of the Ferraris Art online at http://ferrarisart.blogspot.com/

TINY STUDIO

1996.

When you live in a high-rise building where the flats offer limited space you have to adjust to the given area in order to do art. This will have an effect on the way you think about what art piece to do and the way to produce it. This is what happened to me in my first year in Hong Kong.

Living in a somewhat luxurious flat in South Horizons shared with another couple made me think of ways to start painting. I was in a way lucky that my wife and the couple we shared the flat with were all professional office employees who worked from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. It means that the whole flat is mine within the span of time that they were away. What I did was organized a way to make the most of the space and time I had then.

Before anything else, and aside from going around to see all of Hong Kong with my wife and friends on weekends, I managed to prioritize visits to art galleries, to museums and locate all the art supplies stores in the city. It was then that I started collecting my art materials.

I was happy to start the first ever oil on canvas painting that I did in Hong Kong. The title was NEOPHYTE, a four-piece painting in modular composition. The idea behind it was all explained here. Later NEOPHYTE became my entry to the first Sovereign Art Prize art competition in 2004.

The flat where we lived has a carpeted sala and I have to do a routine of covering the whole floor with newspapers to start painting. I painted by placing the canvasses on the floor and viewed the art piece from a distance by climbing up the sofa for a better angle.

It was one of my most relaxed and convenient way of doing art despite the limited space because I have the refrigerator and the TV within reach.

I didn't bought an easel then for the reason that space in Hong Kong is very limited and besides there is no more room to store it. So each day that 5 p.m. approaches I started tidying-up the place and kept my four pieces canvas boards in a slim but safe space.

Part of those early obstacles that I have to deal with was the odor of the oil paint. It was good that the bathroom and toilet, the place where I usually placed the artworks for drying, has an exhaust fan. This has helped to minimize the strong odor.

With all these considerations came the birth of a modular type of art pieces that were designed to adjust and blend with the limited wall areas that high-rise and densely populated cities are so typical of. This concept is clearly explained in "BUY ONE, TAKE MORE."

In this first makeshift studio I had, I experienced some sort of solitude and fulfillment especially when I was able to complete NEOPHYTE. Ironically, though, it was some sort of a retreat to give me space to reflect and come up with the idea behind this painting which was a result of a lingering problem about a culture being perpetuated by people so involved in Greek and Roman-lettered societies. I was involved in it in the past and this is the reason why I started A FRATMAN'S OASIS