ROXAS City – Painter and intermedia artist Julius Redillas, 39, is the first artist-in-residence of Istaran, the art residency program of KANTINA in this city.
Founded and operated by artist-curator Marika Constantino, who recently held her successful Still Life exhibit at Pablo Gallery in Taguig’s Bonifacio Global City, KANTINA is an experimental space for co-learning and co-creating established in February 2020.
Istaran, the residency program of KANTINA, aims to be a custom-tailored experience that promotes an expansive exchange between the resident, the KANTINA team of local artists and cultural workers, the locale, and the Capizeño community by providing a studio home or base in Roxas City.
Redillas, the Pampanga-based artist with a penchant for portraiture and watercolor, who had been working on acrylic and other popular media in the past few years for “practical and economic purposes”, returned to watercolor and spontaneous portraiture during his residency in November and December 2022.
“Post pandemic, I wanted to create art purposively, with a certain schedule and discipline, but with a relaxed deadline, and in a fresh, new environment. KANTINA’s art residency program was just perfect for me,” Redillas recalled.
“What really impressed me during my two-month stay in Roxas City was the sense of the people’s sincere welcome, and their natural flair for storytelling. And, of course, the delicious cuisine,” he added.
Redillas’s experience culminated in a three-day open studio where he exhibited (and sold out!) all the eight watercolors and two collages he produced during his residency. He called his exhibit Two-Story-Dwelling, a play on his Istaran dwelling of a single detached up and down house in the KANTINA compound, and the “two-way process of him listening to locals tell their stories, and responding with his artworks and creative output.”
Redillas’s productive and regenerative art residency also leaves behind a beautiful green space as he helped cultivate the KANTINA garden as a way of unwinding during his downtime./PN
