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By Bettina Olmedo
I found the AEs too stuffy and plastic, and the copywriters just
downright self-conscious and self-absorbed egotists. To my mind, not
one of them could be considered by nubile, fresh graduates like me as
“husband material.”
And then, one day, my friend, Fe Capellan, who was an AE but did not
have the mindset of this advertising specimen, invited me to their
family picnic at Hundred Islands in Pangasinan.
And it was at that time that I met the guy with whom I was destined to
share my life — Onib Olmedo.
What made him so attractive was the fact that he was the very
antithesis of all the people I was working with in advertising.
However, he was not at all like the artists I had to collaborate with in
the commercial world of advertising. His was a quiet intensity and the
authenticity of a perfectly integrated human person.
The paintings he produced were not the pretty, ornamental stuff that
we had been superficially exposed to in our Humanities classes at St.
Theresa’s. In fact, they were all distorted and utterly disturbing, such
that Filipino art collectors would be puzzled, frightened and even
repelled by them.
This was in the swinging ’60s, when Filipinos had developed a taste
only for the vibrant and colorful images of Philippine genre art
depicting indigenous themes like town fiestas, planting and harvesting
rituals, religious festivals and the folklore of a people who are
perpetually smiling, although they may be weeping inside.
Daddy’s girl
Bambi, the older one, looks exactly like her father but is more like me
in terms of personality traits - exuberant, ebullient, caring but also
fiercely determined to stand up for her rights and convictions.
Franjo took after her father, being kind, gentle, compassionate and
generous to a fault. She was his alter ego. They were kindred spirits
who spoke the same language.
Of all the members of the huge Olmedo clan, Franjo is the only one
who really understands and appreciates her father’s art. The two of
them would spend hours discussing his paintings, the nuances of the
distorted floor tiles, the chair intertwined with a girl, the haunting
images on his canvas—with skeletal features and X-ray anatomies that
brought the viewer into the dark recesses of tormented human souls.
In them are distilled the defining moments in a young girl’s life: the
exciting but intimidating prospects of unknown territory represented by
the first day in school; the jitters attending her first performance in a
class play and her first un-chaperoned date at the junior-senior prom;
the exhilaration of venturing into her first coed university after years of
a cloistered existence at a convent school.
The portrait exudes the shy but hopeful aura of youth looking into the
future which holds the distant promise of dreams fulfilled and
expectations realized.
The third portrait in the retrospective exhibit is that of Bambi, short for
Bambina, derived from Onib’s own nickname (Bambino).
In all her other endeavors, however, Onib was fully supportive of his
daughter. He would wait for his daughter during ballet sessions where
he himself would be exposed to demonstrations that showed the
intricacies of pliés and releves, pas de deux and arabesques.
The artistic bent Bambi inherited from her father was recently
illustrated in her first solo photo exhibit at Ayala Museum.
While her father expressed his world view by means of forms, colors
and figures on canvas, Bambi has chosen to project her perspective
through the silver lens. Her photographs illustrate her feel for
composition and her technical skills in what is considered the art form
of the digital era.
Viewers were one in saying that her photographs were perceptive images of the real
world, giving insights into the beauty all around us, escaping our notice because of our
jaded outlook.