Press Democrat Mosaic Artist Isabel Lopez Exhitis at Art at the Source
Many of her works are made with institute materials, from natural stones and stained glass to marbles, shells rocks and corals.
Her father had started a second family with a mistress, leaving his get-go married woman and children to struggle with "scraps." But Lopez managed to get a degree in art from the University of the Philippines and then went to work in fashion pattern.
"In Philippines culture, when you come home, you give half of your salary to your mom to contribute to the household. I realized I cannot make both ends meet. I wanted an air conditioner in my room. I didn't want to sleep in a hard bed anymore."
She wound up moonlighting every bit a sexy lingerie model. That led to a historic public kerfuffle when Lopez was recruited for, and won her country'due south crown in the Miss Universe contest. When her past came to light, public moralists chosen on her to pace downwardly. But she refused and became a celebrity overnight.
"I got the sympathy of the people and somewhen, a producer in the pic industry offered me a role," she recalled. She became 1 of the biggest stars in Filipino movie theater and television, while also working on the side for women's rights.
That early deprivation makes her Sebastopol home a truthful garden of earthly delights. Apples were such an exotic care for when she was a child she would go one a year - on Christmas. At present she is brimful in apples - 6 varieties no less - as well every bit pears, persimmons, pluots, cherries, tangerines, lemons pomegranates and other fruits. The couple too has an herb garden, a vegetable garden, a flower-cutting garden and rows of blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and marionberries, each tucked within the mural.
"Considering I grew upwardly poor, nothing is wasted. I cook what I grow. That is i of my advocacies. It'southward chosen Nutrient Available at Domicile. I live in the big city in Manila then I'm encouraging people to institute and cook what they grow, even if they accept just a planter or a garage," said Lopez of her efforts to introduce urban gardening in her country. She dries fruit and makes preserves to bring dorsum to the Philippines.
Melrod was living in San Francisco when he bought the historic iv-acre country property so his two now-grown sons would have a place to play in the outdoors. But it would as well bear witness to exist an important refuge for healing subsequently he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer four years later and given only six months to alive.
Determining that he needed to live for his young sons, he pushed back at the disease with a combination of aggressive chemotherapy and radiation, alternative treatments, visualization and de-stressing by moving to Sebastopol permanently.
The property is what remains of an original country grant issued by Ulysses S. Grant. At once information technology was a walnut orchard. The copse were somewhen cut and sold for forest and the land subdivided.
"I fell in love with it. It was very much old Sebastopol, kind of hippie. In that location was no orchard. But two llamas," said Melrod, who immediately planted forty fruit trees.
Almost from the beginning he began taming the unruly space into a garden, bit past bit, enlisting the blueprint eye of Ratway, whose postage stamp is evident everywhere, from his signature hornbeam hedges that are creating a crowning canopy over the patio to his scenic sight lines that make yous wonder what is beyond the curve ahead. A principal with plants, Ratway is always coming upwards with intriguing additions, said Melrod, like the newest - big leaf hydrangeas with black stems nigh the guest firm.
Within the garden is a large fountain Melrod deputed from a stone carver in Oaxaca who he met on what he thought would exist his last big trip with his boys in 2007 when his cancer reoccurred. He picked out the rock himself from a nearby mountain. But he lived not only to see the fountain arrive a year later, merely he continues to draw from its majesty; it occupies a spot outside his bedroom, a serene space with a natural-looking waterfall splashing down into a fish pond.
The phenomenon of surviving his deadly disease not only once but twice, led to the name of the property - Ranchito Milagro or phenomenon. While much of the design is Ratway'south, Melrod is also a hands-on gardener. The Himalayan dogwoods are his babies and he restored a fallen gazebo enfolded within heavy canes of ivy
Back in a corner nearly a 300-year-one-time-oak, he finished a labyrinth that someone had begun before he bought the property. He has erected cairns of stones within it in honor of friends who take died. At the eye is a statue of Quan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of pity and mercy.
Both Lopez and Melrod depict deeply from the garden, which represents the grace and healing power of nature and the continuity of life.
"The world has been kind to me fifty-fifty if in the by I went through so much. I'g grateful I went through that. It's defined me and brought out the best in me," said the actor, artist and activist, who is proud to exist turning 60 in two months. "I wouldn't exist as driven if I did not get through those hardships in life."
Y'all can attain Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or at 707-521-5204. On Twitter @megmcconahey.
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Million McConahey
Features, The Printing Democrat
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Source: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/lifestyle/filipina-film-star-maria-isabel-lopez-shows-her-mosaic-art-in-sebastopol-ga/
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