Updated: 6:00 PM, June 8, 2017
Montreal, Quebec
Lenore RS Lim included in Asian Canadian Women Artists Association (ACWA) exhibit
By Ted Alcuitas
Artist printmaker Lenore RS Lim is the only Filipina artist to be included in the 15th anniversary exhibition of the Asian Canadian Women Artists Association (ACWA) in Montreal.
The exhibition at the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec will run from June 8 to July 9, 2017 will feature selected works from ten members. ACWA has been promoting the works of women members from Asian cultures.
The other artists are from Indonesia, Japan, China, Korea and India.
The former New York resident and now a Vancouver resident says it is here that she finds inspiration for her art..
“It’s in Vancouver that I recharge and conceptualize my ideas for my next body of work,” she told Philippine Canadian New.com.
She does most of her work at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York. In Manila, she has an art room where she does monotypes, collographs and collages, pastel & watercolor works where no press is needed.
Lim uses her computer a lot where she stores most her work.
The advent of the internet has opened a whole new era of displaying art other than the traditional framed artworks on canvass.
“As more artists are doing and exhibiting printwork, I think Filipinos are also getting more familiar with printmaking,” Lim says.
Lim has been in printmaking since the 1980s, when she decided to focus on the art form.
“My works will show that whether it is expanding on works that I have already begun or picking up new techniques, change is the force that motivates me as an artist, a mother and a person, ” she says in an artist’s statement.
“Change requires many people to alter comfortable routines, to rethink paradigms, to try new ways of doing things. Constant evolution is one of the few undeniable truths in life.
My prints emerge from an overlapping of artistic concerns, blending the old with the new, building color upon color, technique upon technique. They present the Filipino ideal that is harnessed by nature and personal nostalgia, anticipative of a pleasant tomorrow.”
A graduate of the University of the Philippines’ Fine Arts program, Lim trained at the School of Visual Arts for Printmaking and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York.
Lim received the Presidential Award, specifically the Pamana ng Pilipino Award, for Filipino overseas, in 2004 and the Outstanding Professional Award for Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines Alumni Association in 2005 for her accomplishments in the arts.
She counts a growing audience of collectors in the United States, where she was awarded a prestigious Jackson Pollock-Lee Krasner Foundation Grant, among other honors. In addition to showing at galleries and museum worldwide, Lenore represented the Philippines at the United Nations World Women Conference Exhibit in New York in 2000 and OPEN, the International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, in Venice, Italy in 2002.
Her work is included in the U.S. Library of Congress and the privatecollection of Agnes Gund, Chairman and President Emerita of The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan among others. Ms. Gund penned the foreword to her monograph Profound Afterglow: The Prints of Lenore RS Lim, published by Reyes Publishing in 2005.
She was an art teacher at the International School Manila when an exchange program to the US came.
In 1975, she and husband Jose moved to Mobile, Alabama to teach. From there they moved to Vancouver where they stayed for 12 years.
It was not until 1988 when they moved to New York that she knew where she would like to focus on. She worked as a kindergarten teacher but, at the same time, she was studying computer art and printmaking techniques at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Back then (’80s) computer art was just starting and the class she was taking was pioneering the digital art form.
“I was actually shooting two birds with one stone. I can use my computer knowledge in school and, at the same time, use it for my art,” Lenore says.
Lim is a recipient of the Jackson Pollock-Lee Krasner Foundation Grant. The grant funded her projects and allowed her to work at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop studio with master printmaker Devraj Dakoji.
As with most artists, inspiration comes from everywhere.Her works are symbolisms of her life as an artist, teacher, community leader, and mother.
It can be flowers or landscapes and even pieces of fabric. “When you buy a piece of art, you’re not just buying a piece of paper or canvas with paint, you buy the soul of the artist,” she says.
More than creating art, she knows that giving back is what creates a true artist. Apart from her exhibits, she comes home every two years for her workshops.
Under the Lenore RS Lim Foundation, she imparts what she has learned in printmaking to young artists and aspiring printmakers in the country.
Lim believes her work will speak for herself – a guide that was imparted to her by her teacher.
The grandmother of three, Lenore’s daughter Marie Claire Lim Moore, is the best selling author of two books – Don’t Forget the Soap and Don’t Forget the Parsley.
Husband Jose ‘Didi’ Lim is best known in Vancouver for his fight against the Marcos dictatorship.