FOR ARTIST CHRISTINA Quisumbing Ramilo, the pieces are all coming together. In the last 20 or so years, she has been shuttling between New York and Quezon City like a true child of the diaspora, loading and unloading luggage filled with things she has acquired, made, inherited or received.

And now they are all here in one place. And so is she.

Christina, or Ling to friends and family, has built her home in the Kamuning area, a place remembered by old-timers and balikbayans for its hot pandesal at Kamuning Bakery, excellent tailors and dressmakers, and the Sacred Heart Parish?s simbang gabi (midnight Mass), where one might have stalked a crush or two in fifth grade.

Ling has conjured the house of her dreams in the neighborhood where she was born and raised, and now it stands, constructed with recycled materials, some her own, some found, and still others bought in Laong Laan, or from highway sidewalk vendors, New York City antique shops and thrift stores, anywhere she could find discarded parts of houses: a stained glass window here, distressed doors there, vintage tiles, wooden banisters, antique hardware.

However, these parts were not utilized for their intended purpose. Instead, Ling had them ?reconfigured.? And so the windows are doors and ceilings, stairway stringers become art, doors are walls, there is a lily growing in an old ceramic toilet bowl propped against the fence beside the outdoor sink, and what is that bright yellow kid?s bike doing stuck on the ceiling upside down in the veranda?

Utility with whimsy

The result is actually quite comely and amusing; like a beautiful woman in her prime with a playful sense of style and color.

On a bright sunny day, brilliant hues of blues, reds and yellows are projected onto the walls and hardwood floors through the stained glass pieces that embellish the door. And as one navigates through the house, one discovers rooms and enclaves, sliding windows that do not open to outside of the house but inside?like a peek-a-boo haven that indulges the childlike voyeur in its visitors and inhabitants.

On the ceiling, capiz window panels serve as light shades, and bamboo mats in strategic parts provide an extra layer of cooling relief from the harsh tropical sun.

Indeed, Ling?s collaboration with Zen architect Rosario ?Ning? Encarnacion-Tan has resulted in this dwelling place that has blissfully and effectively married utility with whimsy.

The three-floor building sits on what used to be the house of her late grandmother, Josefa Quisumbing, who bought the land in the early 1950s with her children when Kamuning was sparsely peopled and tall cogon grew abundantly in vacant lots. As the children married off and moved on, Josefa was left behind with Ling?s mother and her family, and the adjacent buildings were built to house her growing clan.

?Everyone in the family has lived here,? Ling says. ?My mother, siblings, aunts, cousins.?

Upon coming back from New York, Ling set up shop in her grandma?s house, which at one point was rented out to tenants. It was dilapidated, termite-ridden, and smelled of rotting wood in the rainy season. And yet it was here where she found rest and relief?where she rediscovered home.

Fil-in-the-Gap

Ling, a Fine Arts graduate from the University of the Philippines, left for New York City to take her master?s degree in Fine Arts at the prestigious New York University. It was in the mid-?80s when she became, not a Fil-Am (Filipino born and/or raised in America) or a Fil-Fil (Filipinos who migrated to America as older adults and therefore are still very much connected to the homeland), but what we jokingly call a Fil-in-the-Gap.

And appropriately so, because the Fil-in-the-Gap is not quite here nor there but right where the chasm is deepest and widest. Here, she has made a home, in the space between Queens, New York and Quezon City, never quite knowing if she was coming or going, staying or leaving.

For many years, Ling lived this suspended existence, until 2005 when she decided to stay in the Philippines for good, a dream all Fil-in-the Gaps have deep in their hearts. Then, her parents had taken ill, and so she was driven, as any dutiful Pinoy daughter would be, to take care of them.

In 2006, Ling?s father passed away. By this time, she had already started work on her grandma?s house, and it was what kept her preoccupied and distracted from the pain of losing a parent she did not see grow old.

?It took about four years to build the house because we did it in parts. I would spend four to six months here and go back to New York. Construction would stop and resume when I got back.?

As the house took shape, her art took off. Since her return in 2005, she has exhibited in numerous venues. ?My art somehow evolved from the discarded parts of the house.? And in both literal and metaphorical sense, it seems.

?Domestic bliss?

An exhibit she had at West Gallery in 2008 called ?Palimpsest? showcased an array of barangay (village) and robot-looking sculptures in varying shapes and sizes assembled from bits and pieces of discarded wood, glass, doorknobs, bottle caps, nails and screws.

?Domestic Bliss? chronicles Ling?s coming back to the Philippines after living in New York for over 20 years. ?I used the renovation of my grandmother?s termite-infested house to reexamine and address these issues: the place I grew up in, my coming to terms with my aging parents, finding closure from past relationships and reestablishing myself here.?

?Madre,? an exhibit she recently had at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, is the vernacular architectural term used for the piece of wood that holds the stairway steps. ?I thought it symbolic, paralleling the women in my family who have held my family together through several generations and who have all lived in my grandmother?s house.

?I dedicated this exhibit to my mother who taught me the value of recycling by transforming everyday items into objects of art, and to my father whose artistic pursuits were kindled by wood.?

She has an ongoing exhibit at Manila Contemporary titled ?Pencilworks, Parameters+Play+Repetition=Patterns.?

Lani T. Montreal, a former Sunday Inquirer Magazine staff writer, is herself a self-confessed Fil-in-the-Gap in Chicago, Illinois where she teaches English and Fine Arts classes at Malcolm X College.