Artist, book and graphic designer Robert
Alejandro thinks one of the most overlooked and
quotidian works of art is the bus ticket. He
buys one for himself when he’s commuting, and
sometimes he picks them up off the street.
So when you open his Moleskine sketchbook, which
won first prize in National Book Store’s My
Moleskine contest, you’d see blue, yellow, and
green bus tickets pasted on the pages — stubs
for long and short journeys plying routes north
and south of Manila. If he didn’t say that he
gathered wayward tickets as a hobby because he
thinks it’s a dying graphic art, what with the
use of electronic printouts these days, you’d
conclude this guy must like riding on buses.
Travel is the theme of Robert’s My Moleskine
entry, one of 30 notebooks submitted by a rich
crop of creatives that range from architects to
writers, interior designers and artists.
That was what NBS Book Express president Miguel
Ramos liked about Robert’s notebook: the element
of wanderlust in the pages. Miguel sat on the
panel of judges along with NBS Foundation
chairman and NBS general manager Trina Alindogan,
fashion designer Rhett Eala, and Arnault Castel,
GM of Working Unit, which distributes Moleskine
in Asia.
“It was like going to different places with his
notebook, and that’s what Moleskine is known for
— it’s a diary, it’s about travel,” says Miguel.
He adds that it was easy to shortlist the
entries but when they got to the final five, the
judges started arguing.
Robert’s pages are filled with drawings of
people and lovers, portraits and places. At
first he wanted to use only pencil as a medium,
but then whenever the urge struck and he found
himself holding a watercolor brush, a ballpen or
a correction pen, he used it. For two months he
carried his Moleskine (his first ever!)
everywhere he went and drew just about
everything.
National Book Store launched My Moleskine in
September 2009 when the traveling My Moleskin
exhibit of notebooks from all around Asia made
pit stops at NBS branches in TriNoma, Glorietta,
SM, Robinsons and Rockwell. Robert’s interest
was piqued when he saw the notebooks encased in
acrylic boxes with holes on the sides for your
hands to turn the pages. Robert was struck by
the creativity of the featured contemporary
artists based in Asia and told himself he would
buy a Moleskine (he had always wanted one but
found it expensive at around P800) to join the
contest.
Robert received P25,000 worth of NBS gift
certificates and a trip to Shanghai to represent
the Philippines in the My Moleskine exhibit.
The second prize went to Merlinda Little, whose
small-sized notebook narrates of a woman finding
out she was pregnant, and third prize went to
Czarina Javier, who did colorful collages on the
pages of her Moleskine.
A former reporter for The Probe Team, Robert got
his own segment thanks to his viewers’ interest
in what he was drawing. “In Probe, we would
shoot and then I would ask the production team,
‘Tapos na ba ako? Sige, doon lang ako sa sulok,’
and I would start drawing until they started to
shoot me drawing and viewers would say, ‘We want
to see his drawings.’ I drew anything about the
story and then it became a segment on the show
called ‘The Drawing Reporter.’ It was really a
great job. Whenever I needed a break they would
whisk me off anywhere. I did this until the show
reformatted and became Probe Profiles.”
He says that as far back as he can remember he
was already drawing. “I would do it everywhere —
our poor walls and furniture at home!”
Robert is the “ro” in Papemelroti, one of the
first stationery and novelty shops to use
recycled and handcrafted materials. No, the name
Papemelroti is not Italian, he clarifies with a
laugh. The store was actually named after the
Alejandro children: Patsy, Peggy , Meldy, Robert
and Tina. Family get-togethers when he was a kid
became arts-and-crafts sessions with the
children playing with clay and making products
for the store. “My mom would pay me one centavo
for every single thing that I did for the store.
Sometimes I would earn 25 centavos.”
As a book designer, Robert has designed over a
dozen books, three of which have won the
National Book Award — Treasures of the National
Museum, Field Guide to Whales and Dolphins in
the Philippines, and Great Churches of the
Philippines — and he is also a Catholic Mass
Media Awardee.
As a graphic artist, he has designed posters,
stamps, magazines, material for malls,
institutions, and public spaces.
As
a TV host, he did the program Art Is-kool for a
year. Then he migrated to Canada and —
ironically for such an adventurer — he came back
home after five months. “I wasn’t happy there. I
realized dito sa Pilipinas talaga ako masaya. I
was watching the recent Winter Oympics on TV,
which were held in Vancouver where I stayed, and
I thought, ‘Should I have stayed there?’” He
answers his own question with a hearty “no.”
As a traveler, he gathered in 2007 — and wrote a
book about — a memory bank full of experiences
when he backpacked for three months around
Southeast Asia and parts of China.
“I stayed in backpackers’ places in 10 countries
for three months,” says Robert. “You can do it
on P50,000 including airfare. I thought it was
the type of travel that Pinoys can do; tumigil
ka munang mag Starbucks araw-araw and you can
save to travel and see the world. Travel is
education. It’s a really good thing to do. I
went with two other people and it changed their
lives. For one of my companions, it was either
he would buy a computer or go on this trip. He
chose the trip.”
As an artist, what he loves about Moleskine is
the texture, the binding, the fact that the
paper is acid-free, you can lay it flat to be
scanned or photocopied, and the way the ink is
absorbed into the paper (he collects fountain
pens as well). “Even if you use a wet medium, di
siya lumulusot and it doesn’t become ‘wavy.’
What I also like about it is that it’s so
dignified. It doesn’t scream. It’s understated.”
For many years the Moleskine notebook was known
as “the nameless black notebook,” and was used
by Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Ernest
Hemingway — imagine the drawings from the first
two and the stories in the last that their
notebooks held!
Soon, Robert’s Moleskine will be open to the
public in an exhibit in Shanghai in October.
I wonder what they would make of the bus
tickets.
