Errol Pacheco Balcos: A Voice from the Land of Promise
by Richard R. Gappi

As a child, Mindanao artist Errol Pacheco Balcos of Cagayan de Oro City lucidly remember the time when his father questioned him for choosing art rather than concentrating on other interest. “Pinagsabihan ako ni Tatay. Sinabihan ako kung ano daw ang makukuha ko sa palagi kong pagdodrawing,” he said. (Father advised me, pointing out that I won’t get anything from artworks that have interested me so much).

He chose to study Architecture upon the prodding of his father but failed to finish it because the muse of art continues to entice him. “So I just decided to make art as my lifetime vocation,” said Balcos, the full-time artist and first recipient of National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) grant titled “ Layag: Contemporary Artist Residency Program.”


From collecting metal scraps to being artist

Balcos had a unique interest before deciding to become an artist. He actually wanted to become an automotive mechanic because during his elementary days, he was fond of collecting metal scraps and observing how toy cars or guns are made. “It was my dream of inventing and producing my own car or gun using the scraps of metals,” he said.

Art came to his life when he was in Grade 4. “I started drawing by copying the image of Voltes V. My teacher noticed that I was somehow good at figures so she asked me to make drawings which were posted in our school bulletin board,” he said. When he reached high school, Balcos became interested in portraits. He was so amazed on how portraits are done that he spent a lot of time after school watching artists doing these sketches in the malls of Cagayan de Oro. “My first portrait was the image of Jesus Christ which I hanged on our door,” he said. The year 1996 was memorable for him because at the age of 20, it was the first time he joined in the group art exhibit by the Oro Art Guild composed of Nonoy Estarte, Bet Vamenta, Rey Bollozos, Carlos Arce, Vic Embate, Jing Manalo and Jake Vamenta who also served as his mentors.

When he reached high school, Balcos became interested in portraits. He was so amazed on how portraits are done that he spent a lot of time after school watching artists doing these sketches in the malls of Cagayan de Oro. “My first portrait was the image of Jesus Christ which I hanged on our door,” he said.

The year 1996 was memorable for him because at the age of 20, it was the first time he joined in the group art exhibit by the Oro Art Guild composed of Nonoy Estarte, Bet Vamenta, Rey Bollozos, Carlos Arce, Vic Embate, Jing Manalo and Jake Vamenta who also served as his mentors.

Oro Art Guild was formed in 1995 with initial members of 50 artists. Balcos says the art scene in Cagayan de Oro is developing through continuous cultural programs and formation of new groups and networks of artists. “There are artists whose works are conceptual but most of them are traditional. This is understandable because the art scene there is still market-driven,” he explains.

When the Oro Art Guild membership dwindled to 10 because the other members chose to work other than art, Balcos and his remaining colleagues founded the SIBAY Art Space in 2003. “Sibay” is a Visayan word for “extended room” and the space served as host to various visiting artists and art forms ranging from art exhibits, workshops, meetings, educational program and lectures. Among his colleagues here were Nonoy Estarte, Gener Loong, Nick Aca, Mike Bacol-Lagos, Oca Floreindo and Marlon Bollozos.

In 2006, Balcos and his colleagues founded the Red Lambago Artists Collective, a multi-media group which presents various art expressions such as poetry, theater and music along with visual arts and painting, which is unprecedented in their local art scene.


Angono art experience

The invitation from NEO-ANGONO Artists Collective for Balcos to stay in Angono for three months came one afternoon. “I was with my friend, Lovella “Dadai” Joaquin, when NEO-ANGONO called. At first, I was reluctant because the residency meant that I have to close the SIBAY Art Space for a while since I’m the only attending to it. But Dadai prodded one and inspired me to take this opportunity as this would mean further learning and exposure,” he explained.

Balcos arrived in Angono a week before the town fiesta in November and in time for NEO-ANGONO’s public art festival, which was also part of the grant that NCCA supported. The public art serves as way where he can interact with various Angono artists and residents. He warmly took part in various performances by providing his time and talent.

After the festival, Balcos started painting in his studio for his residency art exhibit. From time to time, he visited various art spaces and galleries in Angono and Manila (Nemiranda Arthaus, Blanco Museum, Balaw-Balaw Art Gallery, Kuta, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Green Papaya, Pinto Gallery, Future Prospect, Black Soup, Dateline, Pablo, BLANC Artspace, Boston Gallery, West Gallery, Mag:net and Artwalk and Artcenter at the SM Megamall). He also went to various historical and cultural places in Angono as well as in Paete, Laguna where he bought carving tools.

For the past three months, apart from participating in the weeklong public art festival last November, Balcos conducted four art workshops and symposium in various schools and communities, took part in the group exhibits at the CCP, and held two solo exhibits of his drawings and paintings at Hacienda Bar and Grill and at The Second Gallery in Angono, Rizal.


Antos: tracing the geography of pain

Balcos art exhibit at The Second Gallery (February 4-16, 2007) serves as his residency exhibit and caps his three-month stay in Angono.

"Antos," the Visayan word for suffering, tangentially depicts the human body and soul in pain. This is amplified in his works through the contours and colors that throb and suggest the anguish coming from within.

One work, for instance, shows a man whose hands are crossed on his chest while his eyes are staring upward, suggesting emotional tightness and longing for an answer in the depth he's in. The figure, drawn in black, is juxtaposed to red color to signify the intensity of the moment.

Another image is a fish called "kanduli" with its mouth directly pointing to the eyes of the viewer. The fish is at the center of the canvas and surrounded by heavily stroked brown and pale green colors. The whole painting gives an illusion that the fish is floating yet trying to grasp for air because of the polluted water, an apt image for a dying Laguna Lake where "kanduli" and other marine life are endangered.A poignant image also is a man sitting on the floor with his head vowed and his right hand pressing on the wall. The anguish and sorrow exuding from the man's body become terribly painful because the wall does not suggest comfort where he can lean on but an insurmountable blockade.

There are other works that establish the subtlety of pain that stings. Red, orange, and other warm colors are haphazardly applied, creating a coarse surface on the canvas to suggest a tormented moment.

Poems (by the author and Tata Raul Funilas I) that feature the twinge of fate and soured human and social relationship interact with the image itself to form a syllogism of meaning.

"Antos" does not simply trace the contours of pain. It leads us to the crucible path of understanding the instances that bother and beguile so that we could eventually realize and reaffirm our existence as human beings.

Imprints

When asked about three things that he remembered well during his stay in Angono, Balcos enumerated the studio of Wire Tuazon where the artist’s large murals are still-half painted and about to finish; Carlos “Botong” Francisco’s studio; and a scene inside the taxi during his trip in Manila in which the old driver advised him profusely about the importance of sincerity to someone whom you love, even if you are miles apart.

“My images of Angono are usually culled from the books and newspaper articles that I have read. I was very thankful and humbled that I was able to stay in Angono and have my residency art exhibit at the studio and house of National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco,” he said.


Artist Response

Indeed, Balcos three-month stay and NCCA residency in Angono would be somehow an apt response to please a doubting father who is initially against his son’s choice of becoming an artist.

Public Art Across Generations in Angono
by Neliza de Leon

Certain objects become symbolic of a town’s festivity. In Angono, the tourism industry pictures it with “Higantes.” literally giants whose faces are made of paper mache that are paraded over with the symphony band in the entire town along with street-dancing girls called parehadoras during fiesta. But few know that these big-eyed fat giants had been an effigy for political protest in the late 19th century. “Higantes” were art forms created to pose a statement to the public against the oppressive system of the Hacienda in Angono. Unknowingly, the first “higante” produced in the town for the fiesta epitomizes a public art.

This essay on public art is in line with the ongoing Public Art Festival by the Neo-Angono Artists Collective. Now on its third year, the artists of Neo-Angono Artists who come from diverse artistic fields produced works of art and did performances to tap the public and await their participation. This year, with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts providing support for the Public Art Festival, it comes up with about 44 art projects in different venues by individual and artist groups from different artistic fields—film, music, performing and performance arts, dance and literature.

What is a Public Art?

The traditional meaning of public art is a work of art that is located in public spaces and done for the appreciation and or sometimes interaction with the public. Going to Western history in the arts, the meaning of public art began with monumental works such as large-scale sculptures or murals one could see in public spaces and are usually commissioned. Later this public art evolved employing multi-media means. Modern art and its practitioners, like Naum Gabo, at some point Pablo Picasso and the more unconventional in his works, Claes Oldenburg. More and more artists in the West created public art that are transitory such as those in the form of performance art. Poems being posted on street walls and wall paintings have been practiced since then. These are done by artists who usually aim at voicing their sentiments, affecting political circumstances, economic conditions and social values.

This kind of public art by artists who seek newer forms in expressing their art to public spaces is also a response to the monumental public artworks that monopolize and helps wield public opinion. As the usual case, high-budgeted large works of art for the public bears the ideals of the people behind the commissioning of the artwork. As such, the works echo not the voice of the public (we should remember that the public are not all times a unified public) but of the single voice of those in the highest social hierarchy who has the budget to construct large-scale commissioned works.

Public Art in Angono

In Angono, public art never began in such grand manner. The artists have always been leaning on the idea of freedom to meaning for art audiences and freedom of expression for artists. Interestingly, this year’s theme on the respect for human rights relates to the very issue raised in the creation of the first “Higante” the first public art practice. Installed with public art and used as venue for performance art, Angono’s public spaces become a place for public interaction with art, inviting them for critical thoughts on society, politics and human lives. Thus, quoting from the author Rosalyn Deutsche “Public space, in this view, is the uncertain social realm where, in the absence of an absolute foundation, the meaning of the people is simultaneously constituted and put at risk.” Recalling the different public art activities in Angono in the past yields very apt examples.

The artist Juanito Piñon who also creates “Higantes” and fashions paper mache into works of art, shares the story of the first “higantes.” According to him, during the time when Angono was still largely owned by manorial authority or the haciendero, the peasants in Angono who works in the hacienda requested for the part that was justly meant for them for their hard work but the landowner refused to give them a just income. Instead, the landowners got workers from Morong, a town nearby to till their land. The conflict ended up in the court. Infuriated, the peasant town folks created giant effigies that looked like the landowner on the feast of San Isidro. These “higantes” were paraded and people slung them with tomatoes.

Historical accounts of these could be found in Owen Saguinsin’s researches on the biography of early Angono painters Pedro Piñon and Juan Senson where he cited the haciendero as Francisco Guido (1876-1877).

Details of the persons who first fashioned “Higantes” in Angono vary. Contemporary artist Juanito Piñon said he heard it was Quintin Bilang and his sons Badong and Pepe but he said the book by Eugenio Lara on the history of Angono cited Zacharias Santos as the first “higante” maker.

During this time, one could say that the idea of these “higantes,” classified in the academe as folk art, fully fit in to the goals and even in the context of becoming a public art when seen from the point of view of contemporary art.

According to Juanito Piñon, soon after they were first produced during the feast of San Isidro, they were not remade again. Not until the National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco, who was then an enthusiast of the activities for the town fiesta honoring St. Clement, thought about reviving the “Higante” and asked Artemio Tajan to create them. When Botong and Tajan died, the enthusiasm for “Higante” waned down. The tourism industry made it popular again and contests were organized for “higante” creation in the ‘80s. Soon after, the “Higante” creates for itself its different facets in the local iconography. Many of the Neo-Angono Artists members claim it as the first protest effigy in the Philippines. In the present, it gains ritual value marking Angono as tourist attraction in print and television to mark Angono as tourist attraction. “Higante” as a form of protest art of a formerly peasant community in Angono was long been erased.

With Angono becoming a suburban town, its population faces the same crisis of the modern-day living where fast-paced lives are inevitable. Angono shares the same social and environmental problems besetting urban and suburban spaces. It is from this kind of complex spatial and cultural context for the artists of Angono that the public art festivals have been produced in the past two years. The Neo-Angono Artists Collective which comprise members from different fields of the arts presented their works and made art performances that aim at making the public interact and ponder on the issues or subjects presented to them.

The group’s board chairperson Wire Tuazon recalls that the two previous public art’s main thrust was to introduce the arts to the people. Through this public art festival by the Neo-Angono Artists and invited artist groups, works of art and art performances directly address individuals in public spaces. Posting poems in visually strategic locations invites the public to ponder and to be critical with current issues or to feel the nuances of life expressed through poetry.

In such kind of audience interaction, the meanings of the works are left for them either to accept or put to question. Posters and post cards being distributed during the 2nd public art festival are printed with a question “Kaya mo bang maging Higante?” A question that both challenges and invites people especially young artists to aim for the success that Angono’s two giants—National Artists Carlos Botong Francisco and Lucio San Pedro had achieved. Here, the meaning of “Higante” pertains to becoming respected and great.

Unlike the fix and monumental public art works, which bring single unified meanings before the public, these transitory presentations done in the public art festival present issues that invite critical thinking among the audience. The performance art “Mc Pagpag DeValue Meals” by the invited artist group Ugat-Lahi came up with a very strong statement in their performance. It recounts a food poisoning incident that occurred having fast food leftovers found in the garbage bins for their means of subsistence.

Even the choice of location for the showing of short films during public art festivals is site-specific, meaning it was put up in a location that fits in with the goal of the project. Locating it in a parking space of Metrobank, which is exactly where the Star Theater, the former cinema in Angono stood tells of the Angono plaza until late ‘80s. It also had free film showing of the “Botong,” a film by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, held exactly at the studio of the said National Artist.

With simultaneous art presentations in the public spaces of the town—the streets, public market, restaurants—mostly spaces more people frequent, public art festivals cut across the usual market process or system by which artists and his works has to go through in disseminating their art to a target audience or to a public. Public art detours from the usual process of distributing art to the public through the art market system. And there is literally no market of art all for this practice. This article for instance is distributed through a mobile performance art by Ian Lomongo, skipping institutions in the publishing industry for its distribution.

For this year’s one-week public art festival from November 16-22, the people of Angono will just have to look around their streets and the participating artists will bring them closer to the human conditions of our time. Here, the art experience is different from the passivity of watching television or any reading materials. They could see site-specific installations and pass by a film showing in an open space. Posters of poetry and catchy visual statements may baffle them. For seven days, works of art and art performances are not confined to traditional art venues. They are just a glance away, not just there as anticipation for the festivities of a town fiesta. Public art festivals are held to create a dialogue between audience and art and their artists, inviting reception to produce a hundredfold perceptions.