“I wasn’t planning on making this a regular thing,” she said. “Come Art Mart Day, I couldn’t believe I actually finished the booth and do what I’ve always wanted.” Photo by Loren MendozaĪrt Mart Day in BGC was supposed to be the first and last event of Portraits! by Loren. At that point, I was literally doing carpentry work, painting, then doing freelance work at night,” she said. And together with a carpenter she hired, they both worked together in creating the booth just like how she imagined it to be. Loren recalled that a good friend gave her plywood scraps for free. Loren shared that despite going for the cheapest option, her total expenses for the booth still reached P30,000. “The hardest part about the booth was making it,” she said. Initially, Loren was going for the five-minute portrait idea, but after several practices, she realized that she could do the portraits in three minutes. “It was a mix of all my favorite touches from different inspirations and my personal preferences.” “I wanted it to scream ‘Loren,’ I want the booth to look more like a vintage fotoautomat, I want it to be orange,” she said. When she started conceptualizing the design of her booth, Loren was adamant that it should be collapsible and easy to assemble. When she was confirmed to be one of the event’s final lineup of artists, Loren had less than 10 days to make the portrait booth happen.

This realization pushed her to blindly book a slot at the BGC Art Mart on February 17 to 18. And that there was a Loren who had this much love and passion for art, that she did this.” “So my fellow Filipinos will know about me and my art. But then I realized, I want to have a little farewell to my home country,” she told Rappler. “I was planning to just do the booth in the US when I move there. She’s planning to relocate to the US with her fiancé later this year. When she had started committing to her booth project, Loren was actually close to completing her visa application process for the United States. She initially didn’t know where she wanted to do her project. “I would tell myself: ‘This is your birthday gift. “I was so happy and inspired with how they’re operating and I knew I needed to stop sleeping on my pending booth project and really put in my saved up money and start working on it,” she said. It took Loren a vacation trip to South Korea in January 2023, and getting a portrait done from Acorn Caricature pop-up, for her to be fully resolved in fulfilling her dream project.

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