Sarimanok pen and ink, 1975, MSU Marawi City
usually depicted with a fish dangling from its beak and whose wings, it is said, is dipped in rainbow. What could have been simply ornament became, through Imao’s modern executions, a viable artistic theme and a symbol of a people’s belief and aspiration. The CCP Main Theater, during the ceremony, was draped with hundreds of these multi-colored mythical birds, as if ready to accompany to the afterlife the master who made them.