City officials recently commended and appreciated Anna Liza Barroga Carbonell for her unwavering support to mental health awareness and healing as a world class visual artist, a best-selling children’s book author, a mentor and a philanthropist.
In a resolution, local legislators stated that even with plans to finish her Master of Art Therapy in the United States, she still engages in interpreting sign language for the deaf community.
Carbonell is a product of Saint Louis University Laboratory Elementary School, SLU School Center High School, a Bachelor of Science in Biology graduate of SLU, an undergraduate of the SLU School of Medicine and a respiratory therapy graduate of Pines City Colleges.
She is a prolific writer and poet, a best-selling children’s book author, a visual artist, a mentor, and a philanthropist.
The council claimed that having been a former Miss Baguio first runner-up, she is the third child of the late Eleuterio Asuncion Carbonell who worked at the Baguio City Hall and Camp John Hay and Clarita Barroga Hermosa Carbonell who was a teacher at the Baguio Patriotic high school.
Carbonell, who is a member of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC), was conferred a Special Award by the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) during the Academy’s 102nd founding anniversary under Superintendent Maj. Gen. Melchor P. Rosales for ‘Sky Views with Anna,’ a local television segment on prime time aired over SkyCable about socio economic issues, health care and military news that impact the city and the whole country.
Taking inspiration from her daughter Maria Claire Matela, she founded the Maria Claire Children’s Book Foundation, having authored eight best-selling children’s books with all books acclaimed by the Frankfurter Buchmesse Book fair, the world’s largest trade fair for books, and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in the United States.
Her book, The Whitaker Farm, gained so much popularity from the New York Times book review that it had been offered to be recreated into an animated movie by Pixar films and Netflix.
Among the first outreach programs conducted by the Maria Claire Children’s Books Foundation was in 2016 with the children of Helping Hand, Healing Hearts Ministries as beneficiaries.
The council noted that Anna also established the Sage Art Gallery in Michigan that focuses on mental health healing and awareness through visual arts that engaged in philanthropic activities such as giving out 500 art stones to health care workers in the Metro Detroit hospitals and medical clinics in the United States.
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sage Art Gallery funded struggling Baguio artists affiliated with the Kadwa Artists, Fred’s Gallery and the Pasakalye group of artists who have been heavily impacted with the surge of the pandemic.
Anna successfully conducted art exhibits both locally and abroad with the Salaknib Art Exhibit as her first Baguio art exhibit in 2020, and ‘Hypnosis,’ her first solo art exhibit in the US that saw 50 art creations almost all sold out.
A member of Farmington Art Foundation in Michigan, her heart works and paintings have gained great honors in the international art exhibition Pinacotheque held in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in 2020, 2021 and 2023, respectively. By Dexter A. See