Adios Uncle Filamore

This month Filamore Palomo Alcon, artist, art teacher and owner of the Guam Gallery of Art at the Chamoru Village and an uncle of my through the Lujan extended clan network, passed away.

He had been struggling with health issues for some time and his gallery was closed by some of his friends earlier this year after being open for almost three decades. For this reason, he had become less active in recent years as an artist and promoter of local arts, but it is painful

is still painful to imagine that someone who was such a fixture in the Guam art scene and so influential in the movement develop Chamoru artistic consciousness has left us.

When my grandfather, Tun Jack Lujan had a blacksmith shop at the Chamoru Village, the Fil’s gallery was a regular stop for me or for grandpa to check in with Fil on art, on Chamoru Village business, on cultural politics on island. Sometimes I would go visit him while grandpa would watch the shop and sometimes, I would go visit him while grandpa stayed behind. If he wasn’t standing in front of his gallery, he was waiting behind the counter, eager to start a conversation, ask some challenging questions or to just reminiscence.

 

 

In the 1980s and 1990s, when the Chamoru Renaissance was still new, Fil had been a founding member of I Acha'ot Guahan or the Chamorro Artist Association. It featured painters, carvers, poets, playwrights and even my cultural masters such as my grandfather and the carver Tun Segundo Blas. Fil and others helped push artistic consciousness towards engaging with and accepting Chamoru and local imagery. Others had done it before, but Fil through the holding of exhibits first informally in different places, and later in his gallery, but also organizing groups, helped to Chamoru artistry and imagery beyond just outliers or individuals and normalize it into a wider movement.

I remember when I first began painting and creating art, at age 19 while a student at the University of Guam. My assumptions about art at that time were very much defined by the West, by European, by American standards and conventions. I was working to emulate the masters of old or the avant garde of today from outside of Guam. It scarcely occurred to me to engage with local imagery, ideas, history or culture.

Fil's gallery exposed me to the work of so many artists that helped to open my mind. Covering his walls were pen and ink drawings of the Maga'låhi of our past by Joe "Malaet" Garrido. There were meticulous drawings of Ancient Chamoru life by Al Lizama. There were batiks by Judy Flores that drew you in to village life and semi-abstract prints by Monica Baza that mixed cultural symbols in familiar and unfamiliar ways. 

 

 

There were Fil's own colorful and playful odes to the landscape or vitality of island life. The gallery had a way of grounding me and as a result opening me up to the world artistically, but not feeling like the local was something to be shed, ignored or forgotten. But that the local was something that had power and potential just as much as the still lifes created in Italy, the landscapes in French countrysides or drips of paint in New York.

Over the years some of my own paintings ended up on Fil's walls and I even had the honor of selling a few through him. I have many memories fighting to come to the surface as I'm typing this, but in truth there is one in particular that I am grateful for.

In 2019, Fil organized a Mes Chamoru exhibit in the lobby of the Outrigger Hotel and invited both me and my oldest child Sumåhi to submit paintings. At the tender age of 11, this would be the first formal art exhibit that Sumåhi would participate in and in the time since, Sumåhi's art has only continued to grow and advance. Sumåhi has now graduated from high school and has had her work featured in textbooks, in other exhibits and has now illustrated childrens’ books.

I remember feeling immense pride at the opening for that show, and I still hold that feeling with me because of the gineftao, the generosity of Fil in always working to create space for people to exhibit, to display, to express and to show their work. This Mes Chamoru exhibit was just one of so many that he helped organize over the past few decades. We have such a beautiful island, filled with such talented people, but our ability to connect through art always depends on those like Fil who are willing to do the work and create spaces so that their work can be seen and can be appreciated.

The Chamoru Village will not be the same without you Uncle, and neither will the island art scene. Lao Si Yu'os Ma'åse put todu i bidå-mu, hu sen agradesi.

U såga gi minahgong.