A Life of Art — Three women artists exhibit at Museo de Oro
by Kelly Ramos
A family of artists, a mother and her two daughters who are long-time residents of Carmen — west of this city, are holding an art exhibition from August 9 to September 6, 2025 at the Fr. Demetrio Art Gallery in Museo de Oro inside the Ateneo de Cagayan University campus in Corrales Avenue, Cagayan de Oro City. Opening reception is on August 9, Saturday, at 3pm. Everyone is encouraged to visit the gallery and enjoy the artworks by these three women while they are on display. The artists are Sol Azarraga, Barbara Azarraga, and Sol Honey Azarraga.
Barbara and Honey are the women behind Sweet Piece wedding and event styling (2012-present), and AFA interiors (with cousins Karl Joy Angot and Jay-Ann Furog) where they design café and restaurant interiors for clients (2015-2022).
It has only been five months since their first group exhibition during the Golden Hour Music & Arts Festival at the City Amphitheater in Plaza Divisoria when Karumata’s owners Jake Vamenta and Michelle Lua encouraged the three artists to join an exhibition that was organized by Oro Collective in partnership with the city’s Gender and Development Office. After that one-night-only exhibition on February 22, the works were re-mounted at the Annex Building of the City Museum and Heritage Studies Center on March 27 with the help of the Historical and Cultural Heritage Management Division of the City Tourism and Cultural Affairs Office. The remounted exhibit ran for two months and featured 22 artists. This time around, the Tres Marias show at the Museo de Oro is exclusively exhibiting the works of Sol and her two daughters in a month-long exhibition.
A family that paints together…
Sol Radaza and her late husband Julius Azarraga were in the advertising industry for 20 years as base coordinator and area supervisor, respectively, of Promo Dimension (1980-2000). On their weekends off, Sol worked on her mixed-media pieces crafted from materials she collected: buttons, bottlecaps, fabric, thread. Julius, a Sunday craftsman, would be doing carpentry.
This was how their two girls grew up and absorbed a life of art. When their youngest daughter Honey was five, she was given felt paper and pastel, and she painted. Museo de Oro’s longtime resident artist and Cagayan de Oro’s favorite art mentor, Nonoy Estarte, a neighbor and friend to the Azarragas, would encourage Honey to pursue art under his mentorship, but she was too shy to join the summer art workshops at the museum. Instead, she painted on her own. When she graduated from high school, she worked as a makeup artist. This became her stepping-stone to an early career in the creative industry. Her sister Barbara became her partner in business, from makeup-artist-and-hairstylist-duo to wedding and event styling, to interior designing, and now back to their childhood love of artmaking as a family.
The Tres Marias exhibition is a testament to a quiet life of sincere artmaking across generations. The artist family share creative space, and yet all three have chosen different materials and methods to their artmaking. Sol the mother is a crafter and a mixed-media artist. Her playful compositions are the most colorful in this body of work. Barbara the eldest daughter is a sculptor working with paper clay, a method she discovered through experimentation and Youtube videos. She also creates art out of cardboard boxes, transforming them into whimsical treasure chests with amazing detail. Honey the youngest is the painter, who initially worked with vibrant color and traditional subject matter, but has recently found joy in minimalist, nonrepresentational canvases in monochrome. Her experimentations on texture are extraordinary. Her compositions, masterful.
Having all three artists together sharing space in an exhibition for the first time is an inspiring vision of a family in perfect alignment and collaboration through their shared love of art.
In a funny confluence of events, Sol Radaza Azarraga is a niece of Fr. Francisco Radaza Demetrio, the founder of Museo de Oro and namesake of the exhibition venue. In fact, the Radaza family tree is in the Fr. Demetrio memorabilia room on the second floor of the museum, adjacent to the gallery. This show is a fitting tribute to the legacy of Fr. Demetrio on the 58th anniversary of the museum, in more ways than one.
The Tres Marias exhibition is a project of Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan through Xavier Center for Culture and the Arts under Dr. Hobart P. Savior. It is mounted with the partnership of Ba Bun, NRA Colon Hydrotherapy, My Little Kuchi, Kumaykay River Farm, and Chino’s Deli. It is jointly curated by Museo de Oro curator Oscar Floirendo with the support of independent curators Errol Balcos and Rey Bollozos, and with artwriting by La Castilla Museum curator and Carmen Art District arts manager Kelly Ramos.
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