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Tes Pasola

Tes Pasola has truly earned her mark as a paper artist and a product designer. She is president of her 35 year old company, Mind Masters, Inc., an outfit that exports paper based products. She received a degree in Bachelor of Science in Fine Arts and majored in Advertising at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. Soon after she graduated she joined Mind Masters, where she started her career as its designer. Her early works for this company remain in the books as statistical benchmarks.

Tes Pasola is a creative consultant to many companies, for her designs encompasses paper and non-paper. Since 1986, she remains a consistent design awardee for most of her works, reaping numerous Katha Awards. A select award given to companies and designers that show excellence in creative achievement for Best Product, Best Product Collection, and Best Merchandise Display citations. In the three recent international FAME shows, she has yet again merited multiple awards. She however does not seem at all fazed by these tasks at hand nor does it seem like she runs out of even more reasons to create or innovate.

Today she lives out her paper visions into fine tuned perfection with the exquisite collages that she creates for Movement 8, an affiliation which brings her to yet another journey with her favorite medium. This loose alliance of Filipino designers whose mission is to present to the world the face and the reality for the abstraction that is the Filipino design sensibility is her playground. In year 2002, the group received the coveted Editor's award at the Contemporary Furniture Show in New York. In 2003, she played out her latest experiment, the James Bound Collection, which earned her a “Good Design Award” from Japan’s leading product design critiques.

In 2004, she won Best Product Design for the two products she launched for that year. She is often commissioned for curatorships for FAME exhibits organized by the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM). In April 2005, she was tapped to head a pioneering “Cross Breeding project” for the Fashion Accessories Industry which was co-sponsored by Swarovski, the success of which led to a similar approach of design principles applied to her curatorship for the Christmas Decor Industry in 2006.

In July, Tes Pasola was one of the noted designers featured at the furniture special setting organized by the Chamber of Furniture Industries of the Philippines for the Philippine International Furniture Show 2005, which saw the origins of featuring world-renowned product designers such as Karim Rashid and Gaetano Pesce. In August 2005, together with two women artists, she opened an art show at one of Manila's prestigious museums, the Ayala Museum, called “Crystal Fantasies”. One of her works from this show subsequently have been exhibited at the “Swarovski Crystals for Paper” launch in Paris and Tokyo. On the same month, her oversized Sputnik lamp captured the hearts of Manila’s celebrated Interior designers when she joined Movement 8 for a major home magazine's “Bar Lounge” exhibit.

On September 2005, Tes Pasola was tapped to be the featured case presentor for the architecture design, crafts and visual arts truss for the “Nurturing Creativity: The First Philippine Creative Industry Forum” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Dovetailing this event, she held a special art exhibit entitled “Papel ng Papel” (Role of Paper) at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in October 2005, with internationally acclaimed artists and designers Impy Pilapil and Tony Gonzales. In July of 2006 she was invited to hold a one-woman exhibit in Melbourne, Australia, where she was heralded as “A Filipina artist and designer who ripped up preconceptions of her innovative textural paper creations”. At the last April 2007 Manila FAME show, Tes together with three distinguished Filipino designers, curated a much lauded exhibit particularly noted for revamping the image of the Philippines as one of the “Best Design Destination in Asia”.

On July 5, 2007, Tes will be among the 8 artists from the Philippines to debut her re-dressed BMW maquette for BMW World Art Cars, a mobile canvas of symbolism pioneered by Alexander Calder where the automobile is redesigned by an artist to establish a symbiosis between the world of art and the world of motorsport. Collections are continuously exhibited at museums around the world.Yet to come is a curatorship for Maison d’Objet in Paris on September where again she is expected to employ a cutting-edge approach to design. In October 2007 she is slated to have two paper art exhibitions in Alliance Francaise and Galleria Duemila in Manila. She has been sought for the October 2007 Manila FAME to augment her April Manila FAME stint. Another art exhibition is underway for Bangkok, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Anthony "Tony" Gonzales

This is the moniker Tony Gonzales has earned in his successful revolution of the medium.

After earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1982 at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, his path was set. Apprenticing with established Filipino artists in painting and printmaking, he was lured to paper early on, examining it from every perspective, and challenging himself to adamantly question “What if?”

In 1991, helping his father Geoffrey S. Gonzales establish a handmade paper mill they called GSG Industries, he exalted in the free rein he now had in testing the aesthetic sensibilities of a single sheet of paper.

Acting as Creative & Marketing Director, he developed previously unfathomable concepts in paper-making which gave birth to ingenious production techniques that soon gave their company the distinction of being one of the major leading sources for handmade paper. This led the company to set up another paper mill which, to date, uses innovations to create unique machine-made paper by reconfiguring everything traditional paper machines normally do.

From paper-making, Tony went into its conversion when he set up his own firm, A Greeting Card Company, which does exactly as its name suggests, that is, make greeting cards. Tony’s highly curious card concepts arrested the attention of a number of European investors who recognized this exceptionally cunning upstart and tapped Tony to do commissioned works for product design. In particular, he was sought, together with select European paper artists to make a limited edition calendar, singular in its consisting of different paper collages. This extraordinary work has consistently been winning in a prestigious calendar design competition in Stuttgart and Tokyo, the latest of which was this year. He is now explicitly recognized and hired by companies worldwide to design for them as well as branding his name.

Since early ‘90’s, Tony has consistently won the sought-after Katha Award, a select award given to designers and companies who show excellence in arts and design achievements.

From 1995 to date, Tony has been one of the few preferred merchandising consultants of the Department of Trade’s CITEM (Center for International Trade, Expositions and Missions) for its most major trade exhibit, the Manila FAME International Show.

In year 2000 Tony co-founded what is now considered the leading design group in the Philippines, Movement 8. This is the country’s foremost group of designers who manufacture their own eclectic furniture and home accessories creations known worldwide for its unparalleled creativity and cutting-edge perspective of design.

Since 2002, Tony has been commissioned by the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) as its trade show curator in Germany two times a year. Last year also at the Frankfurt Messe, Germany, he curated with another co-founder of Movement 8 and a distinct furniture and visionaire, Budji Layug, the Asean Fusion. This forum brought together leading Southeast Asian designer-led companies in one common platform. ASEAN Fusion remodeled the traditional to cater to the modern tastes and lifestyles of today’s ‘global’ generation and to uplift the image of Asia as a formidable design force to be reckoned with. This somehow changed the image of Asia as solely a low-priced souvenir source.

In 2003, Tony co-conceptualized Manila NOW for the Philippine International Furniture Show. This concept brought into the country internationally-acclaimed designers such as Karim Rashid, a modernist designer and Gaetano Pesce, one of the world’s pioneers of modern design.

In 2004, Tony’s Genie chair was distinguished with the “Good Design Award” from Japan’s leading product design critiques.

In 2005, Tony, having been recognized as a capable curator for the European Chamber of Commerce, was handpicked by the major German trade show, Frankfurt Messe, organizers to curate a special project dubbed as “Asian Living”.

In 2005, he held a special exhibition on paper together with two other acclaimed artists, Impy Pilapil and Tes Pasola, entitled Papel ng Papel (Role of Paper) at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

In 2006, he bagged two other “Good Design Award” citations from Japan for his Melon chair and Mosaic lamp.

In 2006, he was invited to lecture about his design philosophy at the Kaywon School of Art and Design in South Korea for its International Design Forum.

This year, in October 2007, Tony is scheduled to launch two highly anticipated paper exhibitions in Galleria Duemila and Alliance Francaise de Manille.

In November of the same year, Tony with Tes Pasola are slated to hold another exhibition with their favored medium, paper, in Bangkok, Thailand.

Tony Gonzales’ achievements as a designer are not difficult to comprehend when one sees his body of work that exemplifies the best of Filipino creativity and innovation. Tony attributes his success to a clear knowledge of who he is: an artist to the very core. Whether finding time to exhibit at art galleries to self-expression through art pieces that he paints for his friends and clients, over and beyond his visionary triumphs, Tony never departs from his artist’s soul.