Raymund L. FernandezRaymund L. Fernandez is the son of the late Consuelo Lucero Lozada and Venancio Jakosalem Fernandez of Dumanjug Municipality, Cebu. He is the fifth child coming after Ma. Erlinda Bateson, Ma. Teresa Jaca, Bimbo, and Margie; and coming before Vicente and the late Jose Gerardo. He is married to Estela Gonzaga Ocampo. They have three children: Isagani Isla, Linya Julia and Elias Leon.
By his birth certificate, he was born on May 9, 1955, in a barangay called Balay'g Tiki in Dumanjug where he grew to school age. In 1960 his family moved to the city and slowly built for themselves a house at Private, Riverside, officialy known as P. Del Rosario Ext. He studied Kindergarten to High School in Sacred School for Boys. He graduated in 1972, after which he took 2 years of Mechanical Engineering at the University of San Carlos, Technological Center, USC-TC. He did not finish the course. In 1976, he enrolled in the Fine Arts Program of the University of the Philippines Cebu College, UPCC. He graduated in 1982 and after graduation worked as a feature writer for pioneer local magazines including Southern Star and Sunstar Weekend. He was a columnist for Sunstar Weekend and later for the broadsheet, The Independent Post. After the broadsheet came out of circulation, he was invited by Cebu Daily News to be one of its regular columnists. Since 1983 he was a teacher of the Fine Arts Program of UP Cebu. He retired as a Professor for the Fine Arts in 2019. |
Waves are intriguing. And most possibly because they are actually impossible to see much less sculpt unless one imagined it in the sense of physics. And if one studied the physics of waves one eventually comes to the universe of Quantum Physics and the idea that this universe we inhabit, or are entangled in, is composed of waves of energy. We are not star-particles. We are the continuing wave-echoes from the Big Bang. The whole universe still to be understood and all that…
Koantum Balud is our translation of the words Quantum Wave. It is a play of sound rather than a direct translation. “Koan” is a Bisaya word to mean anything at all, universally useful to work as euphemism or refer to something with an indeterminate or difficult to understand meanings; or when one comes to a point of having nothing to say. The word is a construction of the texts “koan” and “tum”- the antecedent syllable of Quantum. Koantum…
Cute. But I have to remind myself that this begins from sculpting waves, which in turn derived from the thematic idea of music, this thought leading to the idea of sound and waves in general. Which idea, I always found intriguing not the least because I grew up all my life with music and the sea always within hearing distance or not too far away from me if I was ever away at all. The nature of islands…
The fact of waves show us how we are linked to each other inexorably and in a most profound way, this link cutting even through time. None of us can ever be alone. In the same way, there is no isolated instant of time, anymore than there are particles in the universe. These are illusions that appear only when we watch and isolate them in our minds and imagination in the same way the sculpted wave. They are only a way of putting it necessitated by the philosophical limits of the act of watching. Otherwise, every thing is moving so quickly as waves they cannot really be watched. Or as Physics tells us: They behave as particles but only when we watch. Otherwise, waves…
Thus, waves describe the ultimate Realism such as it has been defined in Art. Realism as historical art style is not really about Reality as can be seen. Plato had warned that all that we see is illusion. He continued that art is therefore an illusion of an illusion, suggesting in turn how only idea can exist as “real.” Only ideas are really real. Thus, the artists of the Classical and European Renaissance pursued ideal reality and followed mathematical formulas to govern this idealism. They possibly might have found photographs abhorrent. By the time of Francisco Goya (1800s,) artists had awakened to the fact that the reality that appears to us always hides a deeper reality within it; this deeper reality constituted of nuances of horror, beauty, the esthetic, pain, suffering, and triumph. Things that never show themselves unless we imagined them - unless we sought to understand beyond just “seeing.” For just like the quantum, this deeper reality easily disappears with the act of “watching.” So, instead, imagine…
As it is with “Kamatuoran’g Bisaya.” Here again, the idea that cannot exist unless you imagined it, or claim it as birth-right. But imagine, if you will, a universe of art created in these islands from time immemorial. Existing as waves over time. They are quantum waves because they always appear as particles when we watch. Thus, we immediately see it as the art of Avila and Francia, or the art of Agas, Tamayo, Jumalon or Abellana. We miss much, when we content ourselves with these names. There were many more than them though they still remain unnamed. But even if we listed all of them, we might still miss how they are waves of humans who lived particular lives, lived alone or married, had children, families, friends, neighbors, ate, shat, hated and loved. Each existed not in isolation but inside a complex of particular individuals inside communities constituting themselves into a people who called themselves, somewhat mistakenly apologetically - the Bisaya. People and art continue up to now vibrant and alive. And continues deserving its own name…
Here is a story to call it, “Kamatuoran’g Bisaya…”
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Koantum Balud: Usa ka pagsugid sa kontemporariong kamatuoran’g Bisaya

This show began when I found myself carving waves. Just a simple one, found usually on the beach or shoreline. Quickly, I realized I had only two options to do this: Take a picture of a wave and carve that frozen moment; Or, understand what waves are in the sense of Physics.
I favored the second option. If for nothing else but the fact my works in carving always start with the wood. I had the wood and it was already more or less close to the form I wanted. I would have to build my vision around that. A knowledge of how waves behave would help. So I started researching waves.
As it turned out, everything is waves.
Also: Quantum Mechanics is something of a border outpost for what theoretical physicists know about the universe and subatomic particles. What they know of Quantum Physics is already being used in determining the Whys of many phenomena. Time, Space, How some birds navigate, even, how dogs track by smell, and so many other things. But no one really knows how it works. They have the mathematics to compute its applications, but like me, neither do they know exactly why the computations do actually work. This is the field of mystery.
But beyond that: Quantum Physics does have philosophical, even religious implications which are quite interesting. Many would now be familiar with “Many Worlds Theory” and alternative universes. How, in some quantum universe, the God you now believe in would actually be the True one even if the god I believe in may be equally as true. You might be familiar with Schodinger’s Cat, a thought experiment that posits how a cat placed overnight in a closed box with poison may both be alive and dead at the same time. You would not know until you opened the box. But if you did, and it was dead; it would still be alive but only in a different “entanglement” of the universe. Intriguing. And these topics may be researched online.
But even so, I know very little of quantum physics and will never know as much as those who’ve devoted their lives to studying it. But the topic is there for me to learn more of. Some people search for truth through religion. Perhaps I have decided to search for mine somewhere else.
Otherwise, I just need to discover how to carve this wave in front of me, how to capture its form frozen not in an instant of time (for in the sense of quantum physics, that would not give us the true picture) but still there: This is what my wave looks like, though I cannot know why.
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I favored the second option. If for nothing else but the fact my works in carving always start with the wood. I had the wood and it was already more or less close to the form I wanted. I would have to build my vision around that. A knowledge of how waves behave would help. So I started researching waves.
As it turned out, everything is waves.
Also: Quantum Mechanics is something of a border outpost for what theoretical physicists know about the universe and subatomic particles. What they know of Quantum Physics is already being used in determining the Whys of many phenomena. Time, Space, How some birds navigate, even, how dogs track by smell, and so many other things. But no one really knows how it works. They have the mathematics to compute its applications, but like me, neither do they know exactly why the computations do actually work. This is the field of mystery.
But beyond that: Quantum Physics does have philosophical, even religious implications which are quite interesting. Many would now be familiar with “Many Worlds Theory” and alternative universes. How, in some quantum universe, the God you now believe in would actually be the True one even if the god I believe in may be equally as true. You might be familiar with Schodinger’s Cat, a thought experiment that posits how a cat placed overnight in a closed box with poison may both be alive and dead at the same time. You would not know until you opened the box. But if you did, and it was dead; it would still be alive but only in a different “entanglement” of the universe. Intriguing. And these topics may be researched online.
But even so, I know very little of quantum physics and will never know as much as those who’ve devoted their lives to studying it. But the topic is there for me to learn more of. Some people search for truth through religion. Perhaps I have decided to search for mine somewhere else.
Otherwise, I just need to discover how to carve this wave in front of me, how to capture its form frozen not in an instant of time (for in the sense of quantum physics, that would not give us the true picture) but still there: This is what my wave looks like, though I cannot know why.
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Dreams
For two nights now at around 1:40 a.m. I have awoken from dreams that follow after a pattern. They are vivid dreams. And by this I mean, they are dreams where I see everything quite so clearly though I feel I seem to forget some details as I awake. Still I remember enough so I can take something with me to my waking state. They were strange dreams full of images of sculpture that in the dream itself seemed to be not mine. Only in waking do I realize the images are indeed mine: or, to be more precise, they are mine but not by me in my normal state: As if by me but in an altered state. I have had mushrooms a few days ago when the first dream came and I had whiskey this previous afternoon. A few friends came and we shared a bottle. I do not know if this had anything to do with the dream.
I write this down to make sure I do not forget. It is 2:20 a.m. as I am writing this. Up to this moment I feel as if these dreams have altered my art for the rest of time. Perhaps these have to do with thinking about the quantum world. But it feels as if these imagery may be what I am doing in some quantum world out there. And as if they are superpositionings of the art I do in this world. Yet, at the same time they are all that, they seem also connected to the art I have been doing.
The dreams are always situated in Dakong Balay, the family ancestral house in Dumanjug. In the first dream, I am in the house and somebody else is there. Perhaps Estela, or Linya, or my late Mom. Or even perhaps Gingging, my sister, deceased less than a year ago and whose ashes we buried just this month of December at our family plot in Dumanjug. Quiet certainly my companion is female. I am talking to her as we explore a collection of sculpture packed tightly in the living room. In this first dream, the sculpture are white plastic and made as if they are classical sculpture but disembodied. There is a standing figure like Zeus with a hole for a face. I remember the head of a horse but broken off from a missing body. So many beautiful images I cannot by now exactly recall except for one final image. It is “Fallen Angel.” It is a sculpture of an child-angel fallen flat on her face on the floor, forlorn in a way but also quite funny as if the image were taken from a comic book. As the dream ends, or as I drift slowly into waking, the companion asks me whether these sculpture are mine and I always say “No.” But that I have to store the sculpture in a warehouse across the street for safekeeping.
The second dream is entirely in color. It begins in a warehouse but not across the street from Dakung Balay. It is attached to it in the first floor. The sculpture are painted in fun semi-expressionist colors. They are assemble cut-outs. They are all humorous imagery, seemingly from a comic book still as in the first dream. But more fun this time. There is a strong sense here of fun and comic. And I remember especially a puppet figure of Adolf Hitler that can actually be manipulated to move. It is holding a knife for stabbing. I am going to make this one as a piece for “Koantum Wave,” With this dream, I now have a clear image of a thought I had on my second visit to the Qube Gallery. This thought came as a result of the fact that the gallery itself is in the 3rd floor of a building and I thought I should entice people to come up to see my show by putting cut-out figures outside the third floor veranda in front venue much in the spirit of movie houses of old, which advertised what was showing by having these gigantic images outside the theater. One image I take from the dream is a grotesque figure of a giant dog with its head in flames. As in the first dream, my companion asks if these are my artworks and again I say ‘No,” But I feel as if I am keeping them for someone else. Only in waking do I realize I have been dreaming and note happily that the imagery were mine and that they will define my art from here on. Final conclusion: I have to search for new imagery from here on and make art as if they were not mine.
I am writing this not only because I am afraid I might forget. Indeed, after the dream I found myself not at all feeling the desperation to sleep and rest that i usually feel. Perhaps the fact that I have decided to quit smoking helped (Two days now with just one stick per day and the vape.) But I am not so sure.
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For two nights now at around 1:40 a.m. I have awoken from dreams that follow after a pattern. They are vivid dreams. And by this I mean, they are dreams where I see everything quite so clearly though I feel I seem to forget some details as I awake. Still I remember enough so I can take something with me to my waking state. They were strange dreams full of images of sculpture that in the dream itself seemed to be not mine. Only in waking do I realize the images are indeed mine: or, to be more precise, they are mine but not by me in my normal state: As if by me but in an altered state. I have had mushrooms a few days ago when the first dream came and I had whiskey this previous afternoon. A few friends came and we shared a bottle. I do not know if this had anything to do with the dream.
I write this down to make sure I do not forget. It is 2:20 a.m. as I am writing this. Up to this moment I feel as if these dreams have altered my art for the rest of time. Perhaps these have to do with thinking about the quantum world. But it feels as if these imagery may be what I am doing in some quantum world out there. And as if they are superpositionings of the art I do in this world. Yet, at the same time they are all that, they seem also connected to the art I have been doing.
The dreams are always situated in Dakong Balay, the family ancestral house in Dumanjug. In the first dream, I am in the house and somebody else is there. Perhaps Estela, or Linya, or my late Mom. Or even perhaps Gingging, my sister, deceased less than a year ago and whose ashes we buried just this month of December at our family plot in Dumanjug. Quiet certainly my companion is female. I am talking to her as we explore a collection of sculpture packed tightly in the living room. In this first dream, the sculpture are white plastic and made as if they are classical sculpture but disembodied. There is a standing figure like Zeus with a hole for a face. I remember the head of a horse but broken off from a missing body. So many beautiful images I cannot by now exactly recall except for one final image. It is “Fallen Angel.” It is a sculpture of an child-angel fallen flat on her face on the floor, forlorn in a way but also quite funny as if the image were taken from a comic book. As the dream ends, or as I drift slowly into waking, the companion asks me whether these sculpture are mine and I always say “No.” But that I have to store the sculpture in a warehouse across the street for safekeeping.
The second dream is entirely in color. It begins in a warehouse but not across the street from Dakung Balay. It is attached to it in the first floor. The sculpture are painted in fun semi-expressionist colors. They are assemble cut-outs. They are all humorous imagery, seemingly from a comic book still as in the first dream. But more fun this time. There is a strong sense here of fun and comic. And I remember especially a puppet figure of Adolf Hitler that can actually be manipulated to move. It is holding a knife for stabbing. I am going to make this one as a piece for “Koantum Wave,” With this dream, I now have a clear image of a thought I had on my second visit to the Qube Gallery. This thought came as a result of the fact that the gallery itself is in the 3rd floor of a building and I thought I should entice people to come up to see my show by putting cut-out figures outside the third floor veranda in front venue much in the spirit of movie houses of old, which advertised what was showing by having these gigantic images outside the theater. One image I take from the dream is a grotesque figure of a giant dog with its head in flames. As in the first dream, my companion asks if these are my artworks and again I say ‘No,” But I feel as if I am keeping them for someone else. Only in waking do I realize I have been dreaming and note happily that the imagery were mine and that they will define my art from here on. Final conclusion: I have to search for new imagery from here on and make art as if they were not mine.
I am writing this not only because I am afraid I might forget. Indeed, after the dream I found myself not at all feeling the desperation to sleep and rest that i usually feel. Perhaps the fact that I have decided to quit smoking helped (Two days now with just one stick per day and the vape.) But I am not so sure.
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