NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

This month or next I'll be finishing off an art project I've been working on for more than a year with my brother Jack and  i nananfamagu'on-hu Jessica Chan. To be truthful, while I have been working on it for more than a year, the hardwork is actually being done by these artists, I'm doing more of the conceptualizing of it. The project is titled The Untold Story of the Chamurai: How Chamorro and Samurai Warriors Fought off the Spanish in Guam in 1616. I will provide the description below for you to read to get a better idea of what I'm intending, and you should be interested after reading such a weird title. I received a Guam CAHA grant for this project and so the excerpt below is from my grant proposal. The artwork will be displayed in an exhibit sometime this fall. I'm not sure where. I might have a small exhibit in a few months of the just the artwork, perhaps at I.P. Coffee or a similar place. Then later around December I might have a more serious show

This was originally posted on the website Guamology which was run by the Muna Brothers, Don and Kel, but closed down recently after a two year run. I was a writer for the website, sometimes posting every week or so, sometimes once a month. It was a very fun and very informative website and I was happy to help build it since it started in 2008. I cut and pasted a few of the posts that I didn't have records of because they were on my old laptop which was stolen last year. I decided to share one of my painting posts below: ************************* Welcome to another installment of the Joy of Painting! Where I take pictures and write up the progress of a painting that I am making, to go beyond the surface of an artwork, and get into the evolution, the beauty, the struggle of making it. This week’s segment is dedicated to Sarah , who requested that I try out watercolor this time around. The joy in this post’s title is in quotes because watercolor isn’t always a joy for me. Its

My art show at I.P. Coffee is still up for those who are interested in seeing my latest pieces. Email me at mlbasquiat@hotmail.com if you have any questions. The week before last I typed up an artist statement basically explaining to those who were interested, where the notion for the show and its title "Before the Storm, After the Fire" came from. In explaining myself, I ended up using the old Quantum Physics paradox/experiment famously known as "Schrodinger's Cat." Except my version, as you'll read in the first paragraph, is localized to become "Schrodinger's Karabao." I would have given this a completely different name, like "Tun Sakati's Karabao," but since most people already have no idea what this means, I decided not to make it even more obscure. ******************************* BEFORE THE STORM, AFTER THE FIRE Michael Lujan Bevacqua - Artist’s Statement Put fabot, imahina na guaha un kuåto, ya gaige gi este na kuåto,

Last week, I finished what was literally a long road in the course of my life, when I officially stopped being a student and completed my dissertation. I've been in college in some form or another for 13 years straight now and so I am very much looking forward to this period of my life where hokkok i umestudiante-ku, or I'm through being a student. I first started college in 1997, at Cuesta Community College. I spent three semesters there before transferring to the University of Guam. By spring of 2001 I graduated with a double major from UOG in Fine Arts and English/Literature. While I was an undergraduate at UOG, I had two one-man exhibitions of my artwork, the first in 1999 titled "Typhoon: An Island's Intensity" and the second in 2001 titled "I Matan i Kuttura Siha." I was most known during this time for having paint on my clothes all the time, and some people still remember me as "that painted guy." From there I jumped into the Micronesi

Since I've come back to Guam I've been painting a lot more. I'm known on Guam as an artist in addition to be an activist, a writer, a scholar and the grandson of my grandparents. I sold at the Lunar Calendar Festival last month, and also gave out some free art at the Free Art Friday a few weeks ago. I've made about twenty small abstract pieces since the new year and I've already sold or given away half of them. I'm painting a few more this week, and getting them matted and ready for next week's 2nd Isla Art Fair at the University of Guam. Since all this art stuff is going around in my mind and blood, and generally keeping me from writing my dissertation, I thought I'd share a piece I painted over the summer last year. But first some background. The small art pieces I sell on Guam are different than what I've been painting over the past few years while living in San Diego. In the states, most everything I paint has been women's faces or sunsets