Everybody knows this is Erehwon

The place, as befits its name, is not easy to find. The Erehwon Center for the Arts is located off Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, and you get to it after an obscure turn to Villa Beatriz Subdivision in Old Balara, right across a big Toyota dealership on the other side of the road. After a couple of turns you wind up on Don Francisco Street, at which end resides the art gallery, beside an alley right smack into an informal settlers area. Some may say Don Francisco Street is a dead end, and so necessitates the accompanying superstition about carrying a tad of ill luck for enterprises that want to set up shop there, but to a tricycle or ambulant pedestrian it isn’t, not with the busy alley that who knows, could actually lead to nowhere.

But Erehwon, as owner Rafael Benitez would have it, is now here, and all four stories of it an impressive structure that houses galleries, painting and sketching rooms, an art residency dormitory, even a spacious roof deck where one can get a good view of the sunset and perhaps hold concerts and jam sessions like that other famous rooftop gig, the Beatles playing Get Back at the conclusion of Let It Be, atop the Apple Studios building on Abbey Road.

Upon learning that such an arts oasis indeed exists, even in such an out-of-the-way place reminiscent of that Neil Young song and album of the 1970s, “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” the first reaction might be incredulousness. Also, wasn’t there a bookstore by that name in the not-too-distant past? Certainly it evoked images of bohemians and similar nonconformists, and made you Google that old Samuel Butler novel of the same name, the fictional Erehwon, which in a squalid post-romantic sense really is nowhere.

“It used to be a bakery, but we had to close down because of a strike,” Benitez says after a leisurely Sunday brunch at a nearby restaurant.

There’s a video shown in the boardroom, about past exhibits of the center not yet a year in the neighborhood. The opening show “Encuentro” that seems like a tribute to Benitez’s own social realist roots, the wild and freeform 51 artists show that included Igan D’Bayan and other painters of consequence, Kiri Dalena delivering a lecture explaining the aesthetics of what could be an upcoming exhibit, ribbon-cuttings and ceremonials with Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte, ex-first lady Imelda Marcos who Benitez proudly reported climbed the full flight of stairs all the way to the roof deck, former senator Helena Benitez, the father and daughter exhibit “Apple by the Tree” featuring Joly and Jana Benitez (already written by fellow columnist Butch Dalisay in these pages).

There’s more on the drawing board, of course. Raf, if we may call the namesake of the present interim Chelsea coach by his nickname, says there are plans for joint projects with the Quezon City government, including weekend painting and drawing sessions at the Memorial Circle, as well as an exhibit on Quezon City Day at the gallery. The center with the LGU and education department also seeks to give scholarships to talented, budding artists in the barangays, the better to make art not only for its own sake but also as a means of upliftment.

The Center has tapped the services of curator Dayang Yraola, assistant to Patrick Flores at UP’s Vargas Museum, to draw up events and exhibits for the next calendar year, and by the looks of it sounds exciting, especially the interchange between local and foreign artists who will stay in at Erehwon until the collaborative show is hatched. Coming soon is a show by Australia-based former enfant terrible Alwin Reamillo, whose creations and concepts have always been provocative if not mind-blowing. Before he got married and migrated to Australia, Reamillo was with the group of Makiling High School graduates that used to raise hell in the now shuttered Pinaglabanan galleries in San Juan.

Independent minded artists and observers say it is the art interchange and residency that holds the most promise, because the place at times does seem secluded. In the center’s partnership with foreign galleries, local artists also get the chance to serve residency abroad. Though being remote may have its advantages, word has it that Raf and his right hand man Sonny Go are taking steps to reach out to the masses by way of a satellite gallery closer to the capital. But certainly not before Erehwon, as nowhere or now here knows it, establishes itself in its hub of midnight in the oasis of Don Francisco Street, hail Francis, habemus papam conquers all.

Raf Benitez, who published the pivotal books Oldtimer and other stories by Jose Dalisay and Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage by Jose Lacaba, as well as Social Realism by Alice Guillermo in the ’80s, may revive the Asphodel imprint of books for other daring young and not so young authors in their flying trapezes.

To paraphrase Neil Young: Everybody seems to wonder what it’s like down here/ Got to get away from the state of day running around/ Everybody knows this is Erehwon.

Or Talking Heads: We’re on the road to Erehwon.

Or even, God bless, bless God, The Beatles: He’s a real Erehwon man/ Living in his Erehwon land/ making all his Erehwon plans for nobody but old, old Balara, and the balarila, Erehwon fast.