FPAC Fact

"Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture" (FPAC) www.filamarts.org - is the largest presenter of Philippine arts and culture in Southern California presenting over 1200 artists in 9 disciplines and attracting audiences of over 25,000 people from all over the country.

FPAC 2012 @ San Pedro, California.

When FPAC's Pacific Artists Network (PAN) opened up an opportunity for Baybayin Script artist-activists like Kristian Kabuay (baybayin.com), Ray Haguisan (malayadesigns.net), and myself ("Nordenx" baybayinfonts.com), for us to reach and teach more people in Southern California about our advocacy to preserve & propagate our ancient script, we took it.

Since then, we have been in attendance at FPAC every year.

On a side note, I met Kris back in 2010 in San Francisco at a babaylan conference (babaylan.net)  and Ray back in 2011 in San Francisco's Pistahan (pistahan.net) event. We've been together at various Filipino festival venues to promote our ancient script ever since.

 FPAC 2014 weekend Post-eventum Report:

Baybayin Artists @ the 2014 FPAC

This year's FPAC weekend-long event at Grand Park, Los Angeles, had one of the most active Baybayin practitioners in attendance; particularly at the PAN pavilion tent.

Despite the 100+ ℉ heat & humidity and the initial hassles of setting up, the rest of the weekend turned out to be very productive and positive. Foot traffic improved in the afternoons. We all had reasonable sales of our Baybayin themed art materials, but that is inconsequential to the amount of people who stopped by to listen & learn about our ancient script.

I am delighted that many young L.A. Fil-Ams are becoming well-versed in our script. I am also pleased that they now know to avoid Alibata and the failures of Google search results. And I am proud that they also believe in the purity & sanctity of tradition; that "modern" doesn't have to be convoluted by the western alphabet's orthography; and that they recognize the difference between stylizing, functionality, and standardization. I lost count of how many people complimented my modern baybayin typography chart and the multitude of cellphone photos of it being taken.

FPAC 2014 PAN Pavilion @ Los Angeles, CA.

• Kristian Kabuay's art & books are popular as usual, especially among the fan-girls. He did a live baybayin art on-stage and at the pavilion.
• Malaya Designs' pendants are hot as usual (he sold the most as usual). Hearing him explain the background story to his work always brings in a crowd.
• We were glad to finally meet and bring to our fold Robert J Sison and his fresh baybayin materials (love the temporary baybayin tattoos!). 
• Inkanor's baybayin madala shirt & crafts are rockin'!  
• Aicnelav Diyan's Bukobomba Solar Pyrography was a hit (many took photos and videos of her doing live solar pyrography).
• Glad to see Clarisse Pastor-Medina Art (coffee painting) and hear her talk to people about baybayin.
• Always a fan of Ka Faustino Caigoy, I can't believe he was just giving away his baybayin typography prints. But he's just such a nice guy.  
• Eliseo Art A. Silva was in attendance, his murals speak for themselves, but he did a live art painting with baybayin too.
• Baybayin on youtube sensation, David Lazaro performed spoken-word poetry on-stage.
• I sold a few of my remaining Anak Bathala copies of the first Komiks, art prints, and quite a bit of buttons. The best part is talking to folks whose curiosities were piqued by my typography poster. ->

  

  Modern Baybayin Typography

• Bayani Art, was selling their usual Historic Filipino Hero-themed shirts; a few with baybayin designs and Jacob Ira Azurin Vijandre's baybayin chart printed on them. 
• Lauren Benetua's team set up a table for the People of Coloring project where kids of all ages sat down and colored-in the line arts that several of the baybayin artists listed above contributed.
• I saw a couple of message boards and signages from the Youth Groups with baybayin written on them. Correct & proper baybayin too. 

All in all, this was a successful venue in my humble opinion. We can't get to every visitor but collectively we reached hundreds of people and got confirmation that they are learning from what we teach; also confirming what we do matters to many.

Photo Albums from facebook:
FPAC 2012
FPAC 2013
FPAC 2014

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