“Paul Tillich once wrote of art, “every style points to a self-interpretation of man, thus answering the question of the meaning of life. Whatever the subject matter, which the artist chooses he cannot help but betray by his style, his own ultimate concern as well as that of his group and his period. Tillich’s great insight into the theological dimension of art is that a work of art reveals not simply the concerns of the individual artist but also by the entire community that directly (or indirectly) supports the artist. A work of art does not stand simply as a unique expression of an individual artist but also expresses the deepest concerns of the artist’s community.” – Alejandro R. Garcia – Rivera, Wounded Innocence: Sketches for A Theology of Art, 2003.
“Ysabel Simon’s recent paintings on view at the Philippine Center show the love she has for her grandmother. Isabel is a wonderful painter who can capture the essence of her subject’s spirit through strong drawing and the careful manipulation of paint. I have watched her develop the work over the year. I call her a “master of hands.” Her painting of hands and their expression surpasses anyone I know. The expression on her grandmother‘s face and the gesture of the hands brings the paintings to life. They reveal her deep respect for family and for life.” – Professor Howardena Pindell, © 2019, Stony Brook University
“Ysabel’s new series entitled “Rosie” was made under the guidance of the renowned NY-based American artist Howardena Pindell. Howardena’s works are part of the collections of the NYC Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and many more. Howardena was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting,” Dodjie Simon (Ysabel’s dad) described the impressive body of work of his daughter’s mentor.
Ysabel opened her first solo art exhibit, “Meeting Rosie,” at the Philippine Consulate on Fifth Avenue, NY on Sept. 5, 2019. It was on exhibit from Sept. 2 to 20, 2019.
Umuulan ba?
Is it raining? Rosie would ask Ysabel ten times each day in August, the hottest month of 2019 in Los Angeles. Temperatures reached the nineties, yet the question persists from Rosie. Is she recalling her days of looking after Ysabel after school?
When Ysabel was under 10 years old, she spent afternoons at her Grandma Rosie’s house, doing homework. She got picked up from Miriam College (formerly Maryknoll) and her family visited Rosie on Sundays, gathered for Sunday meals together. When it rained, Rosie and Ysabel would watch the rains in silence, savoring each other’s presence.
The exhibit’s theme narrative read: “Rosie was born in 1936, in Cabanatuan, as Rosie Tanaka to a Filipina mother and a Japanese father. After she lost her sister and father during World War II, she with her mother escaped her hometown, changed her last name, and lived in the big city where she helped her mother sell sandwiches to augment their income. Rosie had to start school as an older child. She worked hard, graduated top of her class, and became a nurse in the field of mental health. After the birth of her fourth child, she built a halfway house, first of its kind, to care for people with mental health problems. She worked until she couldn’t. She never even took vacations. After the halfway house’s 50th anniversary, Rosie officially retired in August 2018 and joined her daughter to live in the U.S.”
Rosie asked and asked again. “Is it raining?” Was her feeble, fragile mind trying to recall her past with Ysabel? “I grew up surrounded by schizophrenia, there was no stigma around mental illness, it can be fixed, like a common cold,” Ysabel stated while she saw those patients regularly and meeting them became a normal part of her childhood.
“Do you know the significance of rains?” I asked Ysabel. Shaking her head for a no, I chimed in: “Rains are God’s blessings to us, a form of undeserved grace. Your name is Ysabel Grace, the middle name is a constant reminder that God is always blessing you.”
Our interview turned to her parents. She kept telling her dad that she always wanted to be named Elizabeth only to discover later, that Ysabel is the Spanish spelling for Elizabeth. She got what she wanted.
She is more blessed to keep getting what she wanted. She secured the exhibition space for her first solo exhibit with her dad. When she was training to audition at the Fame High School in La Guardia, she spoke about her mom being supportive and got admitted. Even her brothers are fondly talked about as she got the needed support she needed from them, Joshua mounted the paintings, while Ely helped in outreach.
Child of privilege and propitious future?
When Ysabel graduated in Chatham Middle School in New Jersey, she received an Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts. That summer of 2012, she enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in Manhattan. She would do figure drawing and paint for four to five hours. After lunch, she took the subway to Queens and at Bridgeview School of Fine Arts, to paint for 3 to 4 hours more.
“I would cook dinner and sleep in the living room couch, as my mom was working and she had the bedroom in our apartment. I was given a map and I figured out the trains all by myself. I brought all my stuff, carrying my art box with art pads, portfolio, about twenty pounds, in the subway,” she recounted.
I sensed no resentment, just a feeling of accomplishment on her part, “I had no complaints, it did not feel like work, it was fun.”
She prepared for a three-part audition to get into the “The Fame School” (Fiorello H. La Guardia High School). It consisted of Part I: 3 drawings (live model, still life, composition in cray pas); Part II: written Q and A and an essay and Part III: art portfolio and academic records. When her mom asked how the audition went, “I don’t know,” was all she said.
A few days later, her dad received a call. Ysabel got wind of how voices quieted down. It was a call informing her dad that she was not accepted. Her choices would then be: Baruch High School or go back to New Jersey high school. But, her brother was going to New York for college, while her parents would be working in NY. She got quiet.
Her dad quickly put the rejection call into perspective, “God has another plan.” Ysabel prayed for God’s plan to manifest in her favor. True enough, her character was tested, as the rejection call later became an acceptance call.
Had Ysabel imbibed this rejection as a deficiency in her identity, what would have happened? Instead, her parents knew how to guide her with: “Leave it to God as God knows!”
Thirty minutes later, the director admitted the mistake and called to inform Ysabel was accepted.
She even excelled during the audition for high school admission. Sounds of screams, then a dinner to celebrate.
Her propitious future: ebbs and flows
Ysabel went to New York. She took the train to high school from their apartment. It took her forty-five minutes to an hour, one hour and a half to two hours, both ways on the train. She was so driven that she did not mind.
I posed another question to her, “Are you not a child of privilege? How do you feel about that status in life?” Without any hint of being entitled, she wisely responded, “Yes, I am a child of a privileged family. We are blessed with so much. We don’t deserve all these things. I am living from the fruits of the hard work that my parents have done, [and still do] and my dad never lets me forget that part of our Filipino culture: to be humble and God-fearing.”
Ysabel wanted her first solo exhibit to be about mental health awareness, that we need not stigmatize mental illness, that it can be managed, and that it is simply a result of a chemical imbalance in the brains.
She witnessed folks get well under her grandma Rosie’s care, and under the care of her licensed psychiatrist mom’s Elisa who was then practicing in the Philippines.
Ysabel consented that I share her self-diagnosed depression. It was a result of pursuing three semesters of computer science and devoting zero time to painting while in college. “My mom kept tabs on me, I showed no interest in going to classes, until my Mom and I developed a plan: change majors, change universities, and even go abroad. We then talked to my dad.”
“I went to Florence, Italy. Andi Nufer was my teacher. She emphasized to us to lower our threshold for happiness. After the Santa Croce’s bells rung, our class started. She asked that we go to the courtyard, and listen to nature before class. She taught us to appreciate sunshine, birds, flowers, blue skies so that when we encounter a big moment, we would be filled with deeper levels of happiness,” Ysabel learned abroad.
”I got my focus back and now I am taking multi-disciplinary studies majoring in Business, Asian and Asian American Studies and Studio Art. I am taking a linguistics class (anatomy of English words), finance, advanced lithography, and Korean language. I have an interest in languages and am fluent in English and Tagalog. I studied French, Italian and Japanese. I am currently learning Korean at Stony Brook University. I am also painting in a studio,” she happily shared her current status.
Ysabel Rocks in New York: Her family of artists
Ysabel is the niece of Ben Cabrera, the National Artist of the Philippines whose paintings are housed in Baguio, in a BenCab Museum and whose name has been a household name for almost a half century now. Paul McCartney owns one of his paintings.
Evelyn Mandac, the only Filipina who has sung with the New York Opera, is her aunt.
Dodjie Simon is her dad, and who has composed 65 + songs, music and lyrics, one of which is Ikaw Lamang, created for his muse, Elisa (his wife), and popularized by Zsa Zsa Padilla and revived by Janno and Jaya in the Philippines. Dodjie is also an author of A.I. Hacked, a book on artificial intelligence that was successfully launched.
Aside from a lineage of artistic and intellectual genes, Ysabel developed her artistic talents and aesthetic sensibilities through arts exposure, sheer hard work, and discipline.
I met her when she was a 17 yo high school student at Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music, Art and Performing Arts. She went with me to interview Ronald Cortez, a seasoned realist painter featured in my book, Even The Rainbow Has a Body.
With her parents’ approval, she and I did the interview, while her parents explored nearby Rockefeller Center. It was a beautiful chilly Halloween evening in NY in 2015, but inside, our interview was heartwarming.
Both seasoned painter and student painter easily shared their portraits, what they have done – portraits and sculptural images stored in their I-phones. They asked questions about these images, what they are trying to achieve and the artistic process.
Ysabel asked how to paint a series. Ronald responded: “Just like the rice painting, I had three to four in a series. It allowed me to change canvasses, to focus on another view. I can’t afford to rest, it prolongs the process so I move to [paint] another canvas.”
She asked about motivation, to which Ronald said, “Let the bees, trees, and the birds teach you to paint.”
I then asked Ysabel during our Sept 2019 interview: do you believe “art is a highly sophisticated storage system for understanding communication with cultures over a period of time,” and what if these Rosie’s paintings could speak, what would they say?
“It is about sharing of human experiences, an exchange of perceptions. I want the viewer to know more about mental illness. I did these series of paintings from October 2018 to August 2019. I already knew it would be a series. I remember Ronald giving me advice on how to do a series. He helped me,” Ysabel answered.
In 2016, I chose Ysabel to create the artwork for my first book cover. She drew inspiration from my muse, my granddaughter.
Ysabel shared her intentions in completing the book cover: “As legacies are intended to be passed on to the next generation, there is no better image that reflects the promise of new beginnings and hope than a child’s face. Children remind us of the choice to believe in the part of humanity’s innate creativity, resilience, goodness, and beauty in man in the midst of the constant push and pull between mediocrity and excellence, old and new, good and vile. One part of our self is what we inherit, the other is what we make of it, thus only half of the child’s face is shown.”
Shortly after, she drew an oil portrait of her grandmother, called Tinik, a fishbone hanging out of her grandma’s mouth while eating her dinner. She entered a citywide competition and won. She was then asked by her high school to represent the school in Times Square for an interview.
Tinik was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from June to October 2016. The image of Tinik was e-broadcasted in Times Square for a whole week. Ysabel was asked by her high school to represent them during a Times Square interview. The awards ceremony was held at the Met.
Was Ysabel’s propitious future, a prosperous one, being shown to her, while in high school?
The Fragility of Life
It was NY’s Fashion Week, and folks gathered in NY’s Times Square. It was even the week of US Open held in Queens, NY. Looming gray clouds had spritzed water from above.
It was quite cold but, inside the Philippine Consulate in New York, we were greeted warmly by Ysabel, her dad, her mom, her aunt Joy, and her two brothers, Ely and Josh.
Josh Simon, her brother shared his insights and feelings: “Meeting Rosie’s portraits represent how we have seen our grandmother progressed from taking care of us, sharing her experiences, teaching us, to what she has become. We did not see the slow progression of her disease [Alzheimer’s]. When I saw her, it was heavy on me; spending months taking care of her, just as she spent time taking care of us when we were young. Our whole family became caregivers taking care of our grandma, and the heaviest load fell on Ysabel Grace, as both my mom and I were at work. Grandma is now under full-time care, 24/7 with supervision from a trained nurse back in the Philippines.”
Multigenerational aficionados, art collector, filmmakers, doctors, community friends, family members, students came while some flew in from California, her Tita Joy and her mom, Elisa who works in California. Over a hundred folks’ came to the September opening of “Meeting Rosie,” an exhibit of 10 oil paintings of Rosie, five of Ysabel’s family (mom, dad, brothers, and uncle) and lithograph studies of Rosie #1.
I met Amy Liu, 21 yo, aka Juanwen Liu, a graduate of Stony Brook University, who emigrated from Guangzhou, China during the exhibit. Amy is a dim sum chef, opera singer, painter, and writer of psychological thrillers who said: “I saw all these paintings in my class, spending time with them in the studio as a T.A. (teacher’s assistant). Looking at these oil paintings gave me a sense of serenity and peace and it has subtle shifts [in moods] to pique people’s curiosity, raise questions, what makes the grandmother the subject of the exhibit, why the flowers, the aesthetics, what do the flowers say?”
I sensed that Amy was in an analytical, creative mode of expression, so I asked, “What do the flowers say from your perspective?”
Liu has a B.A. in Studio Art, pursuing courses like creative writing, art history, digital arts minor and opera minor. She responded, amidst the cacophony of noise in the exhibit hall, excited for young Ysabel to open her solo art exhibit.
“It shows so much to appreciate. At first, I thought the flowers are there to memorialize someone, in memory of, but I learned that she is still alive. So for me, the delicate flowers show playfulness, appreciation, a reflection of youth and fragility of life,” Amy articulated.
“This is an amazing art exhibit for a young Filipina American. The consulate and the Philippine Center supports young Fil-Am artists – I want them to know this is their home to reach their potentials and truly, [they can] make this an exhibition space for their artworks,” Vice Consul General Armand Talbo remarked.
Loida Nicolas-Lewis, who previously provided airfare to a painter from the Philippines to travel to NY where his paintings were exhibited, a story which I learned from friends in the community, wrote on the exhibit’s souvenir book: “Wow! A prodigy at such a young age of painting! Our Own Renaissance Painter!”
Loida is a NY-based art collector, philanthropist, billionaire, and a community leader in civil rights and empowerment for the Filipino American community. She got a Jack and Jill Anniversary Award from the Jack and Jill Foundation dedicated to working on issues affecting African American children and their families.
She elaborated later in an email: “I wrote it [the feedback] because painting or drawing the portrait of a person requires great concentration and particularity. Ysabel’s ability to depict and paint in oil the different moods, expression, and attitude of her Grandma in several stages of her life as a senior citizen is remarkable and awesome.”
Recall that Renaissance Art was a period around 1400s – 1500s, which paralleled with the developments in philosophy, literature, music and science? Recall that Leonardo da Vinci had painted Mona Lisa roughly 1503 to 1507, and Michelangelo sculpted the Pieta in 1499?
Ysabel completed 9 oil paintings of Rosie, 4 lithographic prints (made in editions) as part of the Rosie series (only 2 out of the 4 lithograph works were showcased in the exhibition) in a year and were showcased in Sept. 2019.
“The process of lithographic printmaking requires you to be familiar with the subject. Drawing and printing again and again. I must have worked on Rosie’s face more than 50 times for just one print, “ Ysabel stated.
This writer was blessed with an unsolicited gift of Rosie #1, a lithograph. I cherish this as it has become a topic for conversation in my family.
Ysabel’s brother, Joshua, shared his interpretations of her paintings, depicting shifting moods.
Rosie #1 – lithographic print troubled but serene like looking in a mirror
Rosie #2 – similar to #1, disappointed
Rosie #3 – manic, talkative, happy
Rosie #4 – confused, angry
Rosie #5 – paranoid, anxious, controlled
Rosie #6 – supported, scared, controlled
Rosie #7 – angry, annoyed at being told what to do
Rosie #8 – mischievous, childlike, happy
Rosie #9 – cautious, timid, unsatisfied
Rosie #10 – contained sadness, reminiscing, questioning
Ask Ysabel who her favorite painter is and she will point you to Gustav Klimt in the Neue Gallery near the Met, whose portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer #WomaninGold was painted in 1903 to 1907, inspired by 6th Century Byzantine, after Gustav visited the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. “It is a painting created without modeling. It reflects the richness, luxury, Japanese lacquer work, an epitome of refinement and nobility, while lavished in gold,” as described by Susanna Partsch in her book, Gustav Klimt’s Painter of Women.
Can you feel the community’s showers of support for Ysabel’s Meeting Rosie’s exhibit? Did she succeed in sharing or elevating awareness on mental illness, communicating adeptly across cultures about her love for her grandmother and across times?
“When you go the second mile – give more to your work, are more than thoughtful and kind to people, become a joyous giver and a gracious receiver—suddenly life takes on new meaning. On the second mile, you find true happiness, true friends, real satisfaction in living,” Eric Butterworth wisely wrote in his book, Discover the Power Within You.
Ysabel went for more than the second mile and became integrated into the community of caring folks, the true and beautiful supportive members of a very diverse New York community.
Previously Published in Asian Journal