Frank Georg: Turning ordinary spaces into extraordinary places

FEATURE

Zarena Amado

BAGUIO CITY - Baguio is a city of curved, sloped, and winding roads. Enter one alley and you will suddenly find yourself in the middle of Session Road. It is all thanks to landmarks that commuters, tourists, and travelers of all sorts are able to find their way around the City of Pines.

However, these landmarks do not become memorable just because of their strategic locations in the city. These landmarks are ordinary spaces turned into extraordinary, memorable places, with a little touch of art and landscaping some from an unlikely local hero.

Frank Georg is a Germany-born painter and landscaper who has been volunteering, since 2010, to beautify some of Baguio City’s most iconic landmarks like the Baguio Cathedral, the City Hall, the Post Office Loop and the center island in front of Burnham Park’s black iron gates.

The young Georg had many dreams and talents as a child. He learned to swim as early as five years old. A year later, he discovered that he could draw well too. Each year, he strived to improve himself by increasing the difficulty of his self-training sessions.

Instead of staying inside the safety of a pool, he trained to swim in the deeper open seas. Instead of staying inside the classroom painting with potatoes in his arts class, he walked out and redefined “art”. Simultaneously, Georg started learning landscaping in his parents’ garden center, where he eventually found his passion.

The German artist had many good teachers and many people encouraged his talents too. Year by year he sought to improve himself to the person he is today.

“You learn a lot, and what you learn, you can share later,” Georg recalls his father telling him.

Georg: ‘I got laughed at as a kid’ “The French author Jules Verne wrote the book From the Earth to the Moon in 1865. During that time, the people laughed at him. They told him he was crazy. But years later, we have actual rockets exploring the moon],” Georg shares. “Verne had a good imagination.”

Like Verne, Georg had a great imagination, but got laughed at as a kid. When he and his parents visited an art gallery in Germany in his younger years, he recalled being laughed at when he told one of the artists that his own art works will be displayed in the museum too. “But 40 years later, my works are displayed in the Cathedral,” Georg narrates, referring to several of his art works displayed at the Baguio Cathedral, most notable of which is the huge Last Supper in the church.

The young Georg, who took inspiration from classical music and James Bond movies, dreamed to travel far from his European homeland and move to a tropical country to share his passion in painting and landscaping.

In 1996, he found Baguio City, where he eventually settled down. He would leave the country from time to time to do landscaping for friends in other countries, but he always returned to his newfound home in the City of Pines.

“Baguio City can compare with many European cities,” Georg says. “Baguio is just 100 years old while cities in Germany are 800 to 900 years old. But Baguio City made a time jump. People made Baguio City so fast. That is why I want to help Baguio.”

With his continuing volunteerism and passion for painting and landscaping, Georg unconsciously earned 20 certificates of recognition from the city. The number of certificates, however, does not matter to him more than seeing his works of art in display and his landscaped masterpieces appreciated by onlookers, Georg explains.  As a tribute for his hard work, however, a week-long art exhibit showcasing his 63 artworks was put in display in the Baguio City Hall last May 16, much to the humble German’s delight.

Today, Georg’s works continue to be seen in famous landmarks in Baguio City: in the ordinary spaces turned extraordinary places by the unlikely local hero, Frank Georg.

  “I plan to continue volunteering and continue becoming better. It’s like a highway: there’s no end. You can drive and drive and reach the next town, the next town, and the next big city. It’s like life.  You have to go on and on,” Georg shares. “That’s my philosophy.” -