Valentino Zubiri Blog

I used to be a member of a theater group in Chicago, Pintig Cultural Group, where I designed the posters, postcards, tickets, and souvenir programs. However, the most memorable work I did for the group was not the posters. It was when I froze and forgot my lines in the middle of a performance.

What happened was, we in the production side of things were already running around doing nothing, while the real play, scenes from an unfinished country, was already running. We got invited to perform a 20-minute excerpt at the University of Michigan, about 3 hours away, and so the production people were elected to do it. I did the main role, and in the middle of the thing, I forgot my line. I’m really good at making posters. The next time I act, it will be in Hollywood. At least there, someone can shout “Cut!”

Bells of Balangiga, Pintig Cultural Group, Chicago, Illinois

The Bells of Balangiga, a musical, was about the Filipinos in Balangiga, a town in the Philippines who rebelled against the Americans, during the Filipino American War. The Americans took three bells from the local church belfry after the bloody battle, I don’t know when, but two of the bells are now in Wyoming and one is in Korea. There is currently a movement of Filipinos and Americans who want the bells to be returned to the town. I’m not so sure about all this now, I could be wrong, so Google the history for more accurate information.

You will notice that my painting has a mountain of ghostly faces in the horizon, which do not distinguish between Filipino and American. The two arms holding the bell above the embers are actually the current Filipino and American flags. When I learned about this, I felt that the best way I can give tribute to Balangiga was to paint the bell. Because I felt that the United States and the Philippines are both equal players in the battle, I made a symmetrical work broken only by the wavy flame and smoke. I also wanted the title to sit right in the middle of the bell.

Oops, I almost forgot. Bob Couttie, author of Hang the Dogs, the True and Tragic History of the Balangiga Massacre, published in 2004, actually used my painting as a cover for his book. He is part of the Balangiga Research Group. I actually hit the mark, with the ghosts in the back, in my painting. There really have been ghostly apparitions in the graveyards of both the Americans and Filipinos. I just learned about it now, April 7, 2008. Google it.

Below is Bob Couttie’s book cover.

Hang The Dogs: The True Tragic History of the Balangiga Massacre, Bob Couttie, 2004. Bob asked me if he could use my painting as part of his book cover. I’m glad he did.

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Wa Etching! Pintig Cultural Group, Chicago

Wa Etching! This is another poster which I am very proud of. Jaime Almonte, who wrote the play, was and still is a friend of mine, and I was so proud of his work, that I made sure the design for the poster was good. I also believe that the graphical poster, posted all over the city was the first to sell a play, even before play-goers look at the local papers. I believe I succeeded in designing this poster, because it was constantly being stolen, and every three days we had to revisit the local store windows and coffee shops to repost. It hurt me to suggest that we should slash the posters. We did on our third repost, and the stealing stopped. Before this play, Jaime had also written about one or two more plays which the theater group staged.

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Nanay Isog and Her Children Poster, Pintig Cultural Group, Chicago

Nanay Isog and Her Children is a Filipino reinterpretation of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children.

Scenes from an Unfinished Country, Pintig Cultural Group, Chicago, Illinois

Sorry for the moire on this poster. Because the budget for printing was tight during this production, I opted for a monochromatic color. This double-sided poster only used one color ink, like a dark reddish sepia, and I played with the gray scale.

There was a good number of Pintig posters that were double-sided. They were actually fold-out posters, so that historical and other related information can be read on four separate pages, and then the final fold-out would be the poster. Bells of Balangiga was also double-sided, but I was able to get a deal with the printer, so we had a big fold-out poster, another smaller poster and postcards. I did not want my painting to go to waste.

Flipside, Pintig Cultural Group, Chicago, Illinois

Flipside was two separate, but related, short plays.

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I painted a few works on Gessoboard in 1996. Collection of J.A.

You will notice how I placed my last name, “zubiri", at the bottom of all the works. This is my billboard signature, and it will get bigger and more conspicuous. Politicians and everyone else get a billboard to get famous enough to be elected or get the public to do what they want. Everyone nowadays is competing for attention, and artists just continue to paint a pretty picture. It seems that artists should do the same thing, get a billboard, or be left behind. lol.

Girl, hat and coffee in garden, 5″ x 7″, oil on gessoboard, 2006.

Mother and child, 7″ x 5″, oil on gessoboard, 2006.

Red chair, 7″ x 5″, oil on gessoboard, 2006.

Man studying, 5″ x 7″, oil on board, 2006.

Four friends, 5″ x 7″, oil on board, 2006.

Orange lady, 7″ x 5″, oil on board, 2006.

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Two Nudes

These are my works, framed, available for sale by the owner, a friend of mine. Please email me at vzubiri334@aol.com. The male is one of my earliest nudes. My first group show in 1994 showed three male nudes, this and two others, owned by 2 Chicagoans (One works for Kraft, I think until now, I forget his name, and the other one is Phil L. I will see if I can get an image from Phil, if I can track him.)

Valentino Zubiri, Female Nude, height 18″ x width 24″, watercolor on paper, 1995.

Valentino Zubiri, Male Nude, height 24″ x width 18″, pastel on pastel, 1994.

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Oil on canvas portrait of Evelyn Masbaum

I can’t remember when I did this, I think it was in 1998. The images below are from 2000 using a webcam. The actual painting is a little more sepia.

Detail of face. Evelyn Masbaum, approx. 30″ x “20″, oil on canvas, approx. year 1998.

Evelyn Masbaum, approx. 30″ x “20″, oil on canvas, approx. year 1998.

I drew friends in 2007, when I did lab rat studies, just using Sharpie and pastel on paper. Those would be hard to track because they are all living in different states, and I don’t have a lot of their phone numbers. Maybe they will try to email me back.

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Front and Back Cover of Healing Lessons from a Psychic Surgeon

I released this book on the first week of February 2008, a week after releasing the book of nude drawings. This is actually seven chapters from my bigger book, Memoirs of a Masseur, which has more than sixty chapters.

This is still a story, I did not change it to become a technical how-to book. Everyone knows that psychic surgery is not entirely a scientific activity, so after careful thought, even though I am able to write about the topic, I decided to stick to writing about it as part of a story. My goal is still to continue being an artist and my writing still has to reflect the art, so I wrote without an attempt to redirect myself into a career of talking about this subject.

Memoirs of an Artist as a Masseur is not currently available. I decided to edit it some more and add a few more chapters. My sister edited it initially, after my contribution.

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Front and back covers of Valentino F. Zubiri: Nude Drawings and Paintings from 1995 - 1996, 156 pages.

The book is sold here: Lulu.com

The ebook can be viewed and downloaded FREE, here: Scribd.com

for the book was not to sell, but to be viewed. The book is at the standard 300 dots per inch, while the digital ebook is at 72 pixels per inch, which is the display screen resolution. The printed book would be finer.

It’s not like I lose the value of my originals by sharing copies of the book for free. On the other hand, the more people view my images, the more the images become popular and the originals more valuable. It’s a strange thing, because music, for example is the product itself, so downloading free music means less sales.

Then again, I read somewhere that the music industry should have found a way, early on, to profit from filesharing. I creatively found a way to share my works. Scribd.com alone, after 30 days of upload, showed more than 500 views of my file. My rapidshare account had another 400 downloads, and I also found my ebook in other websites, with links to the file that are no longer my original links.

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