Globe artist Ivan Macarambon's career journey started in 1995 at a museum in his hometown of Iligan City, in the Philippines. It was there that Macarambon held his first solo exhibition.

“I was very excited. I was very young then,” he recalled, adding that he thought the exhibit would sell out. It didn't turn out that way, he said, because he had priced the paintings too high.

Now Macarambon's journey has led to Globe's Cobre Valley Center for the Arts (CVCA), which is hosting his first exhibit in the United States. That exhibit, which he calls “City of Dreams,” will be at the CVCA through Nov. 30, 2024.

Macarambon and his family came to Globe in 2022, when his wife Zola Gonzalez-Macarambon was offered an opportunity to teach in San Carlos schools. When not at work on his paintings, Macarambon

is a part-time food service worker with Globe Unified School District.

“When I was a kid, I was already drawing a lot but I never imagined myself being an artist,” he said. “I always thought I'd be a scientist because I also liked to experiment.”

Macarambon studied fine arts for a semester in college; it was his second choice after computer science, which had limited slots. His formal art education was cut short after that semester. “My parents couldn't afford to pay for the college education for all of us,” he said. However, it didn't end at that; he went on to take several courses, including a summer workshop with a well-known Filipino artist named Lea Padilla. “Art keeps beckoning to me,” he said.

Before coming to Globe, Macarambon held several exhibits in the Philippines and Australia, where his family lived for about five years. In 2009 he received the juror’s choice award in the GSIS National Painting Competition (Philippines). His first Australian exhibit was in 2017. While there, he was a finalist in three competitions: the EMSLA Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2017), Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award (2019), and ANL Mission to Seafarers Maritime Art Award (2019).

It was in Australia, he said, that he started doing landscape paintings, “to show the vastness of Australia.” Similarly, the move to Globe has shaped his recent works. “My paintings before were like flat landscapes, but now that we've moved here you can see in my artworks that there are mountains and hills.

“We love it here. We really like the solitude,” he added.

Macarambon has already made a mark in the community, painting a mural near the East Globe School pedestrian overpass as part of I Art Globe's Stairizona Trail project. He was also invited to paint Broad Street storefronts to show their “Tiger Pride” ahead of this year's Globe-Miami football game.

His primary medium is acrylic on canvas, but he has also worked in oil and mixed media. He has painted a number of portraits over his career, as well as learning digital art and graphic art.

Macarambon's experience even extends to theatre; before leaving the Philippines, he was a technical director for the Mindanao Theatre Festival, doing some stage lighting and set design.

He said his palette has changed over the years, from darker shades to the bright colors that permeate the works now on display at the CVCA. For some of those works, he has also used Posca markers.

Macarambon said his landscapes were a mix of actual places he had visited and places from his imagination. Some, he said, were taken from recurring dreams, which inspired the exhibit title “City of Dreams.”

The Cobre Valley Center for the Arts is located at 101 N. Broad St. in downtown Globe.