Designing Pacita Abad

By Mỹ Linh Triệu Nguyễn

Walker Publishing Filed to Design · Part of Unapologetically Pacita

Catalogue for the exhibition Pacita Abad, 2023. Photo by Studio LHOOQ.

I always see the world through color, although my vision, perspective, and paintings are constantly influenced by new ideas and changing environment.

—Pacita Abad

Published on the occasion of Pacita Abad’s first-ever retrospective at the Walker Art Center, this exhibition catalogue surveys three decades of the artist’s multifaceted and exuberant practice. Pacita, an Ivatan and Philippine painter, was a prolific artist, producing approximately 5,000 artworks during her lifetime. She was truly a woman of the world, having lived on six continents and worked in more than 50 countries; the impact of her global travels is evident in the vast range of her material practice and dexterous approach. She is best known for her “trapunto” paintings, a unique hybrid art form that she innovated and coined, referencing the Italian word trapungere, “to embroider.” These quilted, padded canvases of material constellations were visually and physically tactile—hovering between two and three dimensions—and their effect mesmerizes the senses.

The cultures
That [she]
Absorbed, that
She inhaled,
All came into
Her work

—Angel Velasco Shaw

Working closely and collaboratively with the curatorial team—Victoria Sung, associate curator of Visual Arts, and Matthew Villar Miranda, Visual Arts curatorial fellow—STUDIO LHOOQ started building the foundation for the desired impact of the book. We knew that the catalogue needed to match the unequivocal energy of Pacita’s work and spirit and be, in itself, a bold yet intimate self-portrait of the complex woman and artist.

Initial conversations illuminated a few points of interest, an obvious connection being Pacita’s trapunto work; the process of stitching and stuffing employed in these three-dimensional paintings translated easily to an exposed spine binding, in which the stitching and sewing of signatures create the book block.

An exposed spine with signatures visibly bound by multicolored thread, from the onset, seemed like the clear choice. However, as curatorial and design discussions naturally evolve, ideas shifted, priorities changed, and the realities of production budgets emerged. Ultimately, we decided a traditional case binding was the best way forward. This shift enabled us to focus on highlighting key design elements.

Early in the process, we dove deep into the rich mixture of artwork, sketches, and ephemera from Pacita’s extensively documented and meticulously maintained archive. The depth and breadth of archival material was a unique luxury. The photographs of travel, friends, family, scenes from the studio, and works in progress; postcards, letters, clothing, scrapbooks devoted to patterns, news clippings, and so much more provided an intimate and visceral view into Pacita’s world, where art and life seemed inextricably interwoven. We knew the ephemera needed to appear throughout the book as companions to the finished artworks. 

Two pieces of visual material stood out, from which we derived most of our inspiration. Our North Star was POSITIVELY PACITA! This photo feature in Living magazine (1980) captured Pacita’s enveloping energy and captivating personality. It was apparent to us that everything Pacita did, down to her fashion sensibility, was an extension of her art. This feature was the perfect baseline from which any and all of our decisions were made. If  “x” idea did not express POSITIVELY PACITA! then we either reworked it or shelved it all together.

The second source of inspiration came from a collagraphic plate made in 1981, Heart-shaped Mask/Spiral Lady. There is a clear graphic relationship between Heart-shaped Mask/Spiral Lady and the masks in her Bacongo series, along with a loose connection to the many faces of Pacita’s social realism and immigrant experience series. Each representation depicts the complexity and humanness of identity. The reductive nature of this particular face, embedded in two hearts, evokes her expressive and spirited approach.

It simultaneously encompasses the perspective of being a woman, specifically a Filipina immigrant to America, while acknowledging the cultures that influenced her and the stories and struggles of her own experiences.The final cover design features our adaptation of the work, focused on the eyes, performing as a window into Pacita’s heart and soul.

New York is not the center of art; my heart is the center of art. The artist’s heart is the center.

—Santi Bose, one of Pacita's friends and peers

Knowing that this system needed to translate onto the walls of the physical exhibition spaces helped us hone in and refine the key elements that would be most impactful on the micro (book) and macro (gallery) levels. We aimed to develop a material and design system that could translate the exuberance of both her character and her artwork while not flattening it through either:

1) an overly stylized graphic strategy that might distract from the diverse ideas and stylistic approaches of her work, from social realism to abstraction to figurative underwater landscapes; or

2) an overly minimalistic approach that may concealed Pacita’s spirit in choices of typography, color, and material.

It was important to us to develop a graphic system that would reflect the spirit Pacita exuded in her life and work, one that would, upon sight, vibrate in the eyes and heart of the viewer. The objective was to achieve a restrained maximalism of visual buoyancy.

Her horse,
I would say,
was color

— Natalia Himmirska

Our desire for maximalism was further encouraged by Carla Lobregat Balaguer's article, Tropico Vernacular, which detailed a recent history of graphic design and nationalism in the Philippines. In it, Balaguer writes of a cultural imperative for over-the-top ornamentation:

"Here, minimalism can be understood as a sign of poverty, only surfacing when the designer does not possess enough technical or financial prowess for the addition of borloloy (lavish ornamentation), and fills the gaps with decorations that cost time and signify money. A white void might also denote a spiritual lack. There is no greater Filipino sorrow than being alone, and the singular focus—the whiteness—of minimalism can hardly be sold to a people whose idea of visual pleasure is an explosion of the colors and textures that constitute the experience of community. To us, variety is necessary to attract the eye and soul."

Our typographic choice was directly inspired by Pacita’s Bacongo series and Baybayin, a Philippine script used widely during the 16th and 17th centuries before it was replaced by the Latin alphabet during the period of Spanish colonization.

We sought letterforms that were highly contrasted and with calligraphic flourishes, characteristics which alluded to the modulation of the hand and heart, and which felt human but without looking hand drawn.

Eklektyk, a typeface by Laïc Type Foundry, felt like the perfect match in dimension (more tall than wide) and calligraphy (referential yet contemporary). It was the precise decorative element we sought. In addition, the energetic and dynamic typographic specimens found on the jeepneys of Manila also influenced our desire for an ALL CAPS, color-blocking treatment seen throughout the book.

We are a [strict] catholic family
. . . But Pacita broke all the rules.

—Butch Abad

From the beginning, I had a strong impulse to reference (and subvert) old illuminated manuscripts and the decorative traditions used in Catholic gospel design to signify important text. This desire was most likely influenced by two factors: 1) the prominence of Catholicism in the Philippines and 2) the fact that this volume, despite numerous earlier publications of Pacita’s work, would be the most comprehensive account of her life and practice. This intuition was underpinned by Butch Abad’s account of his older sister’s unapologetic nonconformist resolve in every aspect of her life.

Before book spines were regularly marked with titles, fore-edges, the edges of the text block opposite the spine, were used for this purpose; books were shelved with their fore-edges facing outward, allowing the book to be readily identified. This double-faced viewing evoked Pacita’s trapunto work, in which the intended artwork was on the frontside, or recto, and the beautiful backside, or verso, reflecting the literal consequence of her application, was a serendipitous artwork in itself.

Commonly, a portrait, pastoral landscape, or historical scene would be depicted on the fore-edge; however, for us, the only work that seemed appropriately subversive was the abstraction, I Have One Million Things to Say, 2002. According to Pio Abad, Pacita’s nephew, it refers to “the multiplicity of textures, materials, and narratives in [her] works,” and also the complexity of her persona. Personally, knowing that this painting was completed just two years before her death in 2004 as part of her Endless Blues series, it felt like a self-portrait—an autobiographical abstraction encapsulating the breadth of her life’s work, the wide range of her cultural influences, and the landscape of her experiences associated with being a female artist of color.

Essentially, we wanted to design a system that would embody Pacita’s enveloping spirit, that in book form, lying on a table, would declare POSITIVELY PACITA! or within the exhibition spaces, would fully immerse the viewer into Pacita’s rich and vibrant world.▪︎

I want to do
everything
before i leave
this world

—Pacita Abad

Learn more about the exhibition and get your own copy of the catalogue at the Walker Shop