Creativity is the flywheel that gives us the momentum to move forward—forward and out of a catatonic state. In fact, as an enterprise concept, innovation is also called commercial creativity. With creativity we are able to innovate and nudge ourselves out of a slowdown, just like the slowdown that resulted from COVID-19 quarantine orders.Thankfully, creativity is second skin to artists, so many of them used the time to incubate new ideas.


Spaces once overlooked became canvases for artistic exploration. Negrense mosaic artist Lisa de Leon-Zayco trained her sight on their home garden which, by then, was verdant with fruit trees and decorative plants, all owed to her green-thumbed husband, Nonoy. The garden was increasingly becoming a popular extension of the family’s living space, welcoming kin and kindred spirits.

Artist Lisa de Leon-Zayco and her husband Nonoy




Lisa thought of tucking in a bohemian water closet in the lush greenery. A call for empty liquor bottles was made on Facebook, and since the prohibition was back in style, friends obliged. Lisa mosaicked whole bottles into walls. On a bright cloudless day, the walls filter the sun in in beams of ochre, moss, burgundy, indigo, and translucent crystal. Rustic elements, from lighting fixtures to faucets, some found items and some bespoke pieces, pursue the same bohemian peg, unconventional, innovative, and yes, creative.


Lisa calls this art project Nirvana, a happy place. Here she shares happiness and space with art objects not her own. The washbasin is by pottery artist Lanelle Abueva-Fernando, and the abstract painting is by her son, Miko Zayco. She confesses, Nirvana is an ode to “kindness, compassion, and gratitude”, an unshakable tripod of values she prays family, friends, and fellow artists will always have. And though not carved in stone, they are inscribed in a note and sealed in one of the bottles. “This is my message in a bottle, that in times of unnerving worry, we have to hang on to values that evoke humane-ness. In my case, kindness for being, compassion for others, gratitude for art,” Lisa says.

For more on Lisa’s works, check her Facebook Page, Lisa de Leon-Zayco Mosaics.


Text by Alan Gensoli.  Photos courtesy of Lisa de Leon-Zayco.