A clear bowl of sugar – not granules, no – but rows and rows of cane. How I justify imagery is usually given to abstractions, bordering on the ridiculous. But when people refer to Negros as a sugar bowl, I tend to take it literally.

The sugar bowl reference came back to me during the last month’s “Sculptures” exhibition – titled so because theme was non-existent for the 13 artists who were mostly from the central. The exhibition lacked a suggestive invitation but it provided good ground for the three Mangkasanon’s visible break.

When the existence of the “supo” or what are said to be natural canes were introduced to me, I consulted the nearest field and checked the told neatness of the cane growth. I couldn’t distinguish the supo from the tubo. A field is a field is a field. As tame as a little girl’s headsweep after a day in the sun. And so the supo got me interested by their mere breaking through the soil without much ceremony.

Sarnate’s market

This concentrates on social realism with the sharp intensity of his messages rendered through a film of grim sarcasm. As always Susanito “Sonny Boy” Sarnate’s figures are iconographic if not idiomatic. And though the impression of poverty is constantly present in one way or the other, the figures draw the eye through the play of colors in fantastic realism.

Observing his exhibition spreads, the colors and the anatomy would make you think twice about the figure’s inanimation, along with the terracotta’s solid erections; the texture and the fine detail of his deceptively real add-ons – from the vendor’s wares to the flies on the politician’s fanatical bust – never fail to invite a pinch and a tweak just to confirm that these are the least bit edible. Lately he has been toying with kinesthetics. Perhaps for added humanity?

What is apparent in how he presents his works, may it be a series or a standalone, he takes his clay to tell his stories usually with clear beginnings, middle s and endings.

Of the trio he has the most exposure with the strong support of Co and Valenzuela, exacting a smooth lead for the other two who look to him as a local guru. Through his motivation, Sonio and Gatucao took the arts just as seriously and opened up to the Negrense art circle.

The exhibition at Art Attack in Bacolod was primarily themed “Time” and though there were complicated pressure upon the crowd of sculptors, stick to it did the trio, with Sarnate’s time-worn busts of lack, Sonio’s Kapanahunan series patronizing the tabako and vintage smoking, and Gatucao’s haunting Negrense anito.

Ironically enough, time doesn’t usually agree with them. Each of the three have different mindsets concerning time, however, with the element as subject and as a medium of pressure.

Particularly with Sarnate, who considers it his major loss having started with this intimacy with the arts later than personally favorable. He fears time might run out on him and not be able to compensate his outburst of ideas.

Sonio’s tabako

… Is a depiction of culture, with time constantly at a standstill and exists in a frame dictated by the cocks and the crickets. The scenarios he defines with his scalpel introduces the reality of the old and ways we are accustomed to.

“Ang mga naangdan sang mga katigulangan amo ang nangin inspirasyon ko, para mapabutyag sa tanan nga ini waay nagbag-o asta subong; kun isipon naton kita nagakabuhi lang sa pag-agi sang ti-on ugaling sa balatyagon kag sa paminsaron sang kada-isa sa aton yara ang matuod-tuod nga pinoy nga indi madula asta mintras (My inspirations were the ways the elders are most familiar, to make known to everyone that these have not changed to this day; if we think about it we survive only through time but in the hearts and minds of each of us there thrives the true Filipino that will never perish).”

But what is the conflict in the sustainability of old ways and its persistence into the modern age? Kelly Sonio insists that the sustainability of the learned and age-wise character is by intention just as it is by pure human nature. He stands with the totem that people by nature are still good. It is a sugar-coated perception, in my very honest opinion, but perhaps such optimism is what seems amiss.

Through the figures in his Kapanahunan series, Sonio had however not by intention given them a prominent sheen of poverty. Though he my justify that his characters are wallowing in the leisure of rural existence, they do appear worn and tired to me. Thus there is the duality of what he implies in his unhurried “coffee and smoke” scenarios. These people still discuss the weather and the farm and the pests and inflation.

For them not to be given a realistic humanity would sway them over to unnecessary shortsightedness.

Sonio elaborates that his figures are being of simplicity, content with the tidings of everyday. Contentment? There is a fine line between satisfaction and complacency.

In their struggle to break through, they suffered the prescribed pain-for-starters – no pun intended; financially they are basically broke, to take on the weight of the clay for their pieces their backs suffer, and they had to push with unrelenting experimentations to be familiar with the behavior of the clay. I see them as natural phenomena, existing as they do though not by absolute intention. Likened to the supo which were not part of the chosen canes reserved for planting.

Gatucao’s anito

… owns up to the philosophy of the animistic pinoy religion, because in Dann Gatucao’s hushed silence he still suffers misdirection cornering personal faith. The anitos come out as subliminal cravings for immortality.

Reasons may vary as influences do, but according to Gatucao he dabbles with these old guardian ancestors not because he thoroughly believes in the superstition though these figures hold such an intense relevance in the past, but because he sees it a need for people to look back. He implies that people should be conscious that not all inventions of humanity apply at all occasions.

Gatucao says his anitos are mere transitions and not permanent signatures. Ancestral heritage is a good study but he aims to give them more character in the future, render them in settings most relevantly seen in his environs. Like a diverse merging of old folks and contemporary consciousness.

The supo between the rows of tubo may be able to compete with the growth of the regular cane however, not all that is applicable to the cane is just as applicable to the supo.

I live here. I should by now have adopted the prescribed indifference towards my home-patch. But to this pen-stroke, I still romanticize Negros even if all it is are can fields in-between small mansanas. Especially because all it is are cane fields.

I never thought I would give such an emphasis on scrutinizing what can be found between the lines – or shall we say, between the rows of cane.

www.Artnegros.com

The Best of Negrense Art

Art Attack Studio

October 14, 2004