Filipino art has just lost a champion.

Jay Bautista – Kuya Jay to me and our grieving Kule (Philippine Collegian) family – was perhaps the only art reviewer in the industry known to me. I did not know the others – to be honest, I did not really care to.

The reason: even though Kuya Jay had a critical mind, in fact one of the best I’d ever known, he did not criticize so much as champion Filipino artists. He applied his criticism sparingly and exhibited a generosity so rare in many reviewers that would typically scathe and scar the artist for life with snub-nosed opinions masquerading as informed judgment just because they could.

Kuya Jay used his power and influence very wisely, and so very lightly at the same time. If only he’d attached some self-importance to his writing – if only he’d been a little more narcissistic – he would have been a household name for sure. But he was humble and kind and confident enough to know that he didn’t need any of those demons to make a name for himself. Not that he wanted to, for so rarely did he ever write about himself, except when he could use a pseudonym, which he would do for the Collegian’s Mush Issue, a collection of brief musings on love, which was published every February during the ‘90s until the school paper gradually went into decline.  Kuya Jay would rather write about other people. He genuinely wanted others to shine, to succeed.

My beautiful friendship with Kuya Jay spans just two years shy of three decades, starting in 1995 when he became one of my editors at Kule. During that time, Mama was not allowing me to attend presswork, which had to be done overnight on weekends at the office in UP Vinzons Hall, for reasons that only an anxious single mother with three young free-spirited daughters could ever understand. Along with my other editor and ate, Ava Vivian Gonzales, Kuya Jay convinced Mama that I was a promising writer who needed the opportunity to learn the trade inside out. She will be in good hands, he assured her. If he hadn’t gone to our house that day, I would probably have become someone else. Perhaps someone much less than what I am now. (Because the Pearlsha who does not know what Shawarma Nights stand for is definitely a much poorer human indeed.)


I still have that big handwritten card that he sent me when he was working overseas at an art gallery in Saudi Arabia. While Kuya Jay was a bilingual writer, he was so much more devastating when he deployed his exceptional command of Tagalog. Nakakabighani would be a great word to describe his prose. He wrote longhand with a strong pressure, starting his sentences in straight lines that eventually sloped ever gently downward as they approached the margins. He had written me back when I sent him a letter. My heart was broken that time and I gave him a broken piece to see. He gave me back his own broken piece. It was like doing kintsugi on shattered pottery: with each correspondence, everything broken was restored and made even more beautiful than before.

We lost touch for a long time then reconnected in 2005, when, as managing editor of the Philippines Yearbook, I asked him to nominate his favorite Filipino culture bearers. He ended up profiling for us the art curator Bobi Valenzuela, whose gentle, unassuming demeanor and generosity towards Filipino artists, especially those working in the margins, were qualities that I was also seeing in Kuya Jay.

To our delight, Kuya Jay and I discovered more friends in common, including Karen Camilo, a childhood friend from my Holy Trinity Academy days. He shared that he had named his son, Joaquin, after his favorite writers, Nick Joaquin and Luis Joaquin Katigbak, both brilliant writers from two different generations now become immortal through their works, and both personally known to us (yes, I actually met Nick Joaquin, and not only did I know Luis, I also worked with him – by Allah, such great fortune that Kuya Jay and I shared!) When my growing family and I moved back to the UP Diliman area in 2012, I would sometimes bump into fellow Kule alumni Booj, Barry, Chingbee, Papa Al, Jing, Ava, Xands, and I would tell him all about those encounters. You see, UP doesn’t truly let anyone go after one has experienced life inside it. I know of many people who stayed close to the campus after graduating from college, communing with the majestic acacia trees along the Oval, then eating fishballs or isaw after at Mang Larry’s . I was no different. UP and the adjacent Maginhawa area quickly became the place to meet up with Kuya Jay whenever he wanted to hang with myself and Rina Angela Corpus, his fellow editor, a dancer and another soul sister of mine.  

Our worlds were melding, fusing. Kuya Jay also moved in the same circles of literature, music and cinema as I did. As a result, we were pleasantly surprising each other with familiar faces and worn-out places. He clicked, not cliqued. He blended right into wherever he was, codeswitching as needed, but never lost touch with the true national language of the Philippines: humor.

Please don’t give up on your music. Igagapang natin ‘yan. May dalawang kalabaw pa kami sa Nueva Ecija!


Remember: ako ang magsusulat ng (liner notes ng) Kung Bakit Sumasakit Ang Tiyan Kapag Kumain Ka Ng Curry Nang Gutom: Loves of Peachy Volume 1.

When his health started to fail some years ago, I observed a deeper sense of urgency in him, in the way he threw himself into projects and events. He engaged me in Art Petron as a writer, and later on, as contributor for the first release of The Maginhawa Street Journal (where I wrote my first – and possibly my last –  Tagalog essay, wanting so much for him to be proud of me. Imagine my delight when he said he was moved to tears by what I had written). He remained unceasingly funny and constantly maritessed with me about the many remarkable humans of the Filipino culturati that we became involved with professionally in one way or another. I was not exempted from his maritessing, nor was he from mine. Our hearts were always open season to each other.

The past year up to this point in time is becoming a rather long-drawn out open season for many hearts out there in more ways than one. Kuya Jay lost his big sister Cynthia just months before; I am still grieving the loss of my father; my aunt; a friend, only in her thirties, has become a widow; and now, this dear brother, whose smile has disarmed many a militant heart; who had been a witness to my life unfolding (and possibly to yours too, if you have read this far), has also shuffled off this mortal coil forever. I can only find solace in my imagining him reunited with his parents and sister, or maritessing with my Mama, or having a serious chat with Napoleon Abueva, or holding presswork up There, with Kim Nepomuceno, Richard Gappi and Mommy Ericson Acosta, making sure that this little tribute essay names as many names as possible and is as good as it gets.

August 4, 2023, British Columbia
Love and light to Julia, Joaquin, Loudimel and the rest of the Bautista family

Photo: Attending the Collegian Workshop: me, Ava (Vivian Gonzales), Kuya Jay, Elias (Guerrero) and Papa Al (Alcuin Papa) in UP Baguio, circa 1995.