Tags: Visual arts
By KC Santos
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA – Having an inexhaustible imagination led artist and architect Jomike Tejido into exploring contemporary forms of expressing his love for the fine arts.
Growing up as the only child of architect parents, Jomike shares his parents’ passion for building. Raised in a free-spirited and art-loving atmosphere, he eventually started his career as a practicing architect in the family-owned firm.
He is also an accomplished children’s book illustrator and writer, and an artist whose knack for unconventional media made him shine.
“Concept and design are nothing if you don’t build. The medium I use is rather obscure but I make sure I execute but in a different way,” Jomike says.
He often use banig as canvas for his acrylic paintings and creates folder-made robots called “Foldabots,” and resin to create designer toys inspired by the Philippine Tarsier.
Nowadays, Jomike uses cubes of wood for his newest collection called Wood Menagerie to form wild animals following this European concept of animal collecting.
In seventeenth century France, menagerie was actually a system employed by rulers and aristocrats to capture animals from the wild. More than a spectacle kept inside palaces or in a separate menagerie, this system of collecting animals is often associated with collector’s high stature in society.
Using the same wood used in making furniture, Jomike applies various art disciplines like cubism and deStijl to build different kinds of wild animals in full color. He is able to support a backyard industry for the wood he uses for his menageries.
Jomike’s works might not be as monumental as the structures he helps build but he says being an architect helped him design and build miniature works of art.
Jomike maintains a nature-oriented perspective of promoting awareness. It also helps that he is an avid toy collector and that he is able to keep a child-like view of the beauty there is in the Philippines if only people would help maintain it.
When not illustrating books or designing new characters for his other artistic ventures, Jomike can often be seen in bazaars, silently sketching in one corner but educating curious youths who he aims to teach a thing or two about art and environment through mediums that are appealing to them.
To sustain his craft, he sells his original menageries in bazaars and hand-made art fairs for 5,000 pesos. He also sells the paintings where the menageries were drafted from for another 500 pesos for each piece.
Menageries may have entailed keeping animals in captivity in the past but Jomike’s long-term goal is to make outdoor exhibition spaces the open menagerie for his wooden pieces.
He aims to make more people, both kids and kids-at-heart to appreciate nature and wildlife more by exposing and possibly making contemporary, life-sized, and functional menagerie art installation to be enjoyed by a larger Filipino audience.
Get more information about Wood Menagerie
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Will you kindly send contact information of Jomike Tejido to my personal address ASAP. Thanks much.