about dreamworld babaylan
Kelsey Boncato is a Filipina American artist whose creative life is shaped by dreams, visions, and subtle synchronicities. A Cancerian with three Grand Water Trines, she channels intuitive wisdom through emotionally resonant art and storytelling. Her work is rooted in her Ilocano, Tagalog, and Visayan-Romblon lineage –cultures honoring elements of water and earth.
A visionary at heart, Kelsey is inspired by the Babaylan (buh-bye-lawn) –the pre-colonial Filipina community guides, seers, and healers. She walks a babaylan-inspired* path, informed by ancestral memory and dreamwork, as a commitment to creative service. Like the T’boli Dreamweavers of Mindanao, who receive sacred patterns in dreams and weave them into abaca cloth, Kelsey translates her own dream messages into symbolic drawings and sequences creating tangible maps of the inner world that invite reflection, clarity, and grounded transformation.
She holds a BA in Art from the USC Roski School of Art & Design and has worked with her dreams since junior high, practicing more intentionally for a decade.
Her earliest dream memory is from toddlerhood: a vivid scene where her father was bitten by a caged parrot, became possessed, and began crawling behind the couches. As she followed, he began to crawl backwards –a haunting memory that would intrigue her to follow the strange, symbolic, and mysterious. ✦