Noma

     

Amirasolo and Other Essays

Part 2. My Trip Around the Art World

Essay 20. ME AND NOMA

By Arnaldo B. Mirasol

Noma here refers to the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations. It was a competition mainly held every two years whose aim was to discover up-and-coming picture book illustrators in Asia, Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The prize was named after Shoichi Noma,  fourth president of the Japanese family-run publishing house Kodansha Ltd., whose generous financial support enabled the competition to last for thirty years---from 1978 to 2008.

The Noma Concours was a big thing for us picture book illustrators. Landing in its list of winners was our biggest aspiration then not only because of the generous prize money, but also because of the bragging rights the prize-winner will feel entitled to. If I remember correctly, the grand prize winner gets 3000 USD, the two second placers 1000 USD each, and the ten runners-up 300 USD each. Those prizes were not purchase prizes. All five Illustrations sent as entries to the competition by each participant, including those of the prize-winners, will be returned.

A woman who was connected to a publication gave me an entry form for the competition. I remember that I was most grateful and thanked her profusely for her gesture, thinking that she did that out of the goodness of her heart and her sincere desire to help me advance my career.

I was wrong. There was a string attached. She revealed days later what her real intention was. She had written a story which she wanted me to do the Illustrations for. The Illustrations I'll come up with will then be my entry to the Noma Concours.

She had seen the "The Origin of the Frog", and was most likely impressed by my Illustrations for that book. She was perhaps hoping that the quality of my Illustrations for her story would equal that of the Origin of the Frog. Because if that is so, those Illustrations would have a good chance of landing a prize in the Noma Concours. She believed that if that happened she could perhaps persuade a publisher to publish her story as a picture book

If you fellow illustrators were in my shoes, what would you do? Would you be willing to again go through long nights for weeks and exert intense effort doing new Illustrations for a book you'll enter in the Noma Concours---or would you just choose the five required Illustrations from what you had on hand and mail the whole package pronto to the Noma office in Tokyo? I of course did the latter, as I know you would too.

Not many Filipino illustrators did well in the Noma Concours. My good friend Ferdinand Doctolero, a consistent prize-winner in major art competitions here and abroad, won one of the two second prizes in the 11th  Noma Concours in 1998---the highest place garnered by a Filipino. I don't know whose artworks won the grand prize in that edition of the competition, but upon seeing Ferdinand's Illustrations I adjudged right away that they were also grand prize material. Ferdinand's entry, his Illustrations for the story written by National Artist for Literature Virgilio Almario---"Sundalong Patpat"--- were not only highly artistic but novel too. You see, all the Illustrations were painted, not on watercolor paper as we illustrators are wont to do, but on wood.

Another prize-winner in the Noma Concours was the late Albert Gamos, the preeminent picture book illustrator of our time. I learned that he'd illustrated more than 28 picture books, published both locally and internationally. He was Honorable Mention in the 1985 Biennial of Illustrations Bratislava, and was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards the year he died in 2009.

Albert's Illustrations for "Pandaguan" won a runner-up award in the 8th Noma Concours in 1992, the same award my Illustrations for the Origin of the Frog won eight years later.

Albert had achieved a lot. He had left a big and lasting legacy to us. His death was a big loss not only for the picture book industry but also for those who admired him, including me.

There are two other Filipinos who also placed in the Noma Concours and were awarded Encouragement Prizes. They are Ruben de Jesus, who won the prize twice, and Frances Alcaraz. There might be other Filipino prize-winners I'm not aware of at this point. I'd appreciate it very much if someone tell me their names.

Still aspiring to win the grand prize, I tried to enter to the competition the illustrations I did in 2008 for Nida Raisanen's Cebuano-English book "Ang Palasyo sa Serena (The Mermaids Castle)". I emailed Noma Concours in 2009 to request that they send me an entry form so that I'll know the new rules if there are any for what I supposed as their 17th competition. The answer I received dismayed me. I was told that the Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations "ended its history in 2008." I was two years too late.

I received word on my winning a prize for my entry in the 12th Noma Concours through a letter I received one afternoon The letter said that my Illustrations for the "The Origin of the Frog" won one of the two second prizes. I was naturally very pleased and thrilled, and began listing in my head the items I would buy with the 1000 dollars the prize carried.

But before I could brag to my relatives and friends about my latest achievement, there arrived another letter from Noma. The letter said that they've mixed things up. That what I actually won wasn't second place but just one of the runner-up awards worth 300 dollars.

Oh what a let-down that was! Anyway, I'm still pleased that I placed in the competition. That was achievement enough for me. But not enough I supposed for me to earn bragging rights like Ferdinand Doctolero.