This story is adapted from the Lamar Dodd School of Art’s Graduate Student News and Galleries pages.
First-year Art Education PhD student Erny ros V. Manlangit (Amos) blends two distinct disciplines—the fine arts and special education, having dedicated his professional practice and advocacy-building efforts to this field over the past seventeen (17) years. Amos also brings to the Dodd his love for different creative expressions, exploring mandala-making, facilitating art journaling sessions, and dancing for fitness to promote mental and emotional well-being. He enjoys living in his kaleidoscopic world, fusing his different passions and a range of intercultural experiences to render life with a wide range of colors.
Amos completed his Bachelor’s in Fine Arts (Major in Painting) and his Master’s in Special Education at the University of the Philippines. Along the way, he has thrived as an elementary school teacher, school administrator, expressive arts facilitator, special education consultant, and college instructor in his home country, the Philippines. However, his prolific interactions with creative, gifted, and talented individuals led him to focus on the inclusive arts, an emerging philosophy and field of study seeking universal access to the arts. He aims to profile the varied flow experiences of persons with disabilities, finding ways to unleash their artistic potentials using individualized methods in arts and special education.
A Fulbright Scholar and Doctoral Fellow at UGA, Amos is actively connected with organizations committed to a wide range of causes and has participated in international fellowships and mobility grants to connect with artist-educators globally. He was a recipient of the British Council’s Connecting Through Cultures (CTC) Professional Mobility Grant at the UK in 2020, a presenter at the 13th SAMBHAV Arts Conference 2018 in India, a conference scholar at the 1st Arts and Disability International Conference (ADIC) in 2018, and a Fellow in the Arts for Good Cultural Exchange Program 2019 in Singapore.
In-between: Individual Works and Collaborations
For this exhibition Amos V. Manlangit, Dodd PhD candidate in Art Education, invited several artists to collaborate on a series of new paintings in order to explore how markings on two sides of a transparent panel can create uncertainty through the muddling of images. Dual personas, whether one artist alternating sides or two collaborators in a dialogue, generate a conversation between visual elements to negotiate on a unified aesthetic. Characterized by tension and unpredictability that would lead to reciprocity and harmony, the resulting installation embodies a shared language built entirely on reflexivity and trust.
In-between invites the viewer to resist interpretation from the images that transpired. Inspired by pseudo-writings of the Asemic practice, the lines – whether resembling ornamental patterns, calligraphic marks, or written language – may find new agency in the imagery that organically formed in the artistic collaboration. If we choose to focus on the materiality of the motifs and allow them to exist as they are, it may lead to new trajectories where, instead of intending to be deciphered, the act of becoming may signify new possibilities for interaction through art.