Art in the Park at 20: How a Barangay Event Became an Influential Art Marketplace

(SPOT.ph) Art in the Park, the annual one-day-only art market in Salcedo Village’s Jaime Velasquez Park, is marking its 20th year when its gates open this Sunday. Having established itself as the go-to for beginning art collectors, with everything priced no higher than P70,000—for a while it was just P50,000—it’s one of the most awaited events in Manila’s art calendar, the forerunner to the highly successful and more serious Art Fair Philippines.

But did you know it started as a humble barangay event?

While it all began in 2006, the seed efforts for it were unknowingly being made much earlier. Co-founder Lisa Periquet, a Salcedo Village resident, noticed from her bathroom window that the car park in between Tordesillas and Leviste Streets was underutilized. Part of it was devoted to a small playground for the neighborhood kids, yes, but not a lot of people were parking their cars in the property. “There were so many areas in Salcedo where you can park then,” Lisa tells Spot. So she wrote a letter to MACEA, or the Makati Commercial Estate Association, and suggested to turn the whole thing into a real park instead. “You’ll earn a lot of goodwill,” she told them. “Everyone here is so starving for a park.”

Suffice it to say MACEA listened, and just before the makeover hit its first year, then Barangay Kapitana Nene Lichauco was asking Lisa and Lisa's fellow Museum Foundation of the Philippines board member Trickie Lopa, to suggest an event that will celebrate the park's first anniversary. They came up with the Salcedo Community Market. A year later, needing another event to celebrate another anniversary, they gave birth to Art in the Park.

Lisa and Trickie put the whole thing together, and picked the Museum Foundation, which supports the National Museum, as beneficiary. The two ladies during that time began to notice it was getting harder and harder to sell tickets to the usual fundraising concerts. “I don't think I could sell another concert ticket. There must be an easier way to raise funds,” Trickie, then secretary of the board, recalls thinking. “Why not an art market?” She had then just accompanied her doctor husband to a medical convention in Sydney, and while he attended the talks, she wandered around The Rocks Market, the outdoor market that featured crafts alongside a range of street foods.

When it was decided that a weekend art market will be the anniversary event for the park, to share space with the Salcedo Community Market, Lisa and Trickie started calling friends from the art scene like Hiraya Gallery’s Didi Dee and The Drawing Room’s Jun Villalon. One of the early meetings was held at the old Windows Cafe in Salcedo Village, owned by Trickie's cousin Tina. “When it was brought up that the price ceiling for the art works will be P10,000,” shares Trickie, “someone said pa nga ‘Gawin mo naman 20.”

Even then, the idea for Art in the Park was to make it a very chill affair, its ambition quite modest. “In comparison to the Art Fair, we didn’t have so much of a vision and goal in the beginning,” says Lisa. “What we wanted was very simple: to do a nice event in a casual setting where all kinds of people can access the art—because it’s not against the white walls of a gallery. You can just browse and there’s no pressure to buy.”

For the very first Art in the Park, they only had 12 booths (there will be 55 participating groups this Sunday) and a marching band that woke up the neighborhood at 7 in the morning, a staple in Barangay Bel-air to-dos. “Can you imagine having the art people come in at 7 a.m.?” asks Trickie. We can’t, but they were there. Young artists and friends Lui Medina, Patty Eustaquio and Maria Taniguchi patiently tended to their own booth—thanks to Marc Medina, brother of Lui and member of the Museum Foundation, who convinced them to participate in the event. “I remember seeing them and looking not very happy having to be up at 7 in the morning and manning their booth until 2 p.m.”

Art patron Dr. Joven Cuanang was there too, repping his Boston Gallery in Cubao, bringing with him works from the first show of Rodel Tapaya at Boston, among existing works from other artists. This was all before Pintô Art Museum in Antipolo, which would open four years later. At Art in the Park, the famed neurologist had to share a booth with Artinformal’s Tina Fernandez. The late gallerist Norma Liongoren, a good friend of the Museum Foundation, was there, too, with her Manny Garibays. “Mamimilit pa yan,” recalls Trickie fondly of Norma. “‘Sige na, bilhin mo na yan,’ she would say.”

The very first Art in the Park attracted the art-interested in the immediate neighborhood, and friends of Lisa and Trickie, of course. “It was a very organic, casual, neighborly, community-based event,” says Lisa. And everything was done manually: Trickie just devised a payment system, something she learned while running a teenage clothing brand called Orange Juice.

Even with a bare bones team and being essentially a side attraction to the food in the weekend market, the first Art in the Park was a success. And it would eventually take a major load off the Museum Foundation’s funding problems. “We earned enough to last us the next year or so and Museum Foundation can also be more active because of that,” says Trickie. They no longer have to raise funds for every project, and Trickie never had to sell another concert ticket.

It changed the course of her life in a bigger way, too. “Looking back, the people I met then I’m friends with until now,” Trickie shares. “For me personally, it’s like I found my tribe. I found my calling.” A few years later, she would begin a blog called Manila Art Blogger, and then of course, together with Lisa and Dindin Araneta, another friend from the Museum Foundation, she would launch Art Fair Philippines in 2013, having been prodded by the very galleries at Art in the Park and having tested their mettle in organizing a sizable art event.

Art in the Park has always been a joy to organize, if you ask Lisa and Trickie. “It’s never been a headache. Reception has always been positive and energizing. It’s always fun.” If the Art Fair tend to stir controversy at times, coupled with guests and gallerists whining about the cramped car park set up, Art in the Park is effortlessly chill, with a crowd that enjoyed being in the open space and under the sun, coolly powering through Manila’s hot weather with a drink in one hand and a pamaypay on the other.

Not that it’s all been uneventful, but the memorable moments tend to be of the wholesome kind: like Danny Dalena generously donating two of his works to be auctioned off, and someone buying an unsigned art piece for cheap only to find out later on that it's a BenCab. But of course there was also that time when the fair got majorly rained on. Lisa still remembers watching poor Vince Lajora playing the sax along with the downpour, as Agnes Arellano’s sculptures got soaking wet. “It was nice and awful at the same time,” Lisa recalls. Meanwhile, Trickie recalls the time when art star Ronald Ventura and his gallery joined Art in the Park and failed to make a sale. "I told them why price it kasi at P8,000? Dapat 5,000 lang!" Of course, a few years later, Ronald would make headlines with the sale of his "Greyhound" painting in Sotheby's Hong Kong for a then-record price of HK$1.1 million, and he would make more headline-making sales after.

Despite not having a goal in the beginning beyond providing Barangay Bel-air with an event to mark the first year of the Salcedo Community Market, Art in the Park has over the years become more intentional in its programming, making space for featured artists like Pete Jimenez and Ral Arogante, and taking on the purpose of helping widen the audience for art in the country. It has been known for the latter, actually, thanks to its very welcoming, inclusive way of presenting art.

And if Trickie credits Art in the Park for opening new doors for her, it’s also become sort of a gateway for both young collectors and young artists to immerse themselves in the world of art. “A lot of special exhibit artists in the last few years, TRNZ for instance, or Demi Padua, or Bjorn Calleja, they said the first time they decided they could actually have a career as artists was when they showed their works at Art in the Park," Trickie says with pride. "They saw people appreciate their works. And a lot of art collectors also will say that the first time they bought art was at Art in the Park. So it’s really sort of an entry point for artists and collectors.”