Pia Rivera

"I actually like it that people see things in my art," Pia explains."Some people interpret it in a way that's personal, they put their own meaning and see certain little details in a different way."Pia personally works according to her moods, which are sometimes apparent in series of pieces that she does at the same time-sometimes they have the same color palette or occasional style similarities-hints of the process she goes through in creating them.For her, art is very much about the process, not just the finished piece, and incidentally, she likes it that as much as art is the process of creating, viewing it also becomes a process of seeing.

"I like taking my time with my pieces," she says."And I never know exactly what the outcome will be.I like looking through my personal scrapbooks and writings, getting ideas from the emotions and experiences I have.And I use softdrink can tabs, tea bags, embroidery, scraps of denim, or any other found objects in my works-whatever strikes me, sometimes a stamp I collect from my travels, or stitching and beadwork that I like.The pieces in the exhibit illustrate my relationships and my continuous search for meaningful experiences.I enjoy the whole process I go through to translate what I'm feeling, which is why my art is very personal to me." Pia goes on to explain that even when she had been a Fine Arts major in UST, she preferred a more emotional approach to art and didn't quite take to the way art was presented in the institution, which was rather impersonal, technical, and constrained."Honestly, if you ask me what school of art my paintings hail from, I can't answer that," Pia says."That isn't how I create my pieces.I don't think that way."After UST, Pia took studio painting courses at the San Francisco School of Art, then later went to Florence, Italy, where she earned a Graduate Certificate in Art at the Instituto d' Arte Lorenzo de Medici.In between, she has had several exhibits, both group and solo, including one in Florence and several in Manila.
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Pia is currently finishing her Master of Arts in Education at Ateneo and runs a studio in Makati where she teaches art to both children and adults with varying creative skills and encouraging them to let out the artist that is inside them.
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Pia Rivera may be reached at 0917-5331336 and Alfredo Mendoza at 0917-5360479.