Atelier Aguila

Friends know by now that my favorite R&R (and that’s not just entirely for rock-‘n’-roll) destination for the past few years has been Antulang Beach Resort in Siaton, Negros Oriental, nearly an hour’s drive south of Dumaguete. It seems I can’t revisit my adopted hometown — rechristened “DumasGoethe” by one of its outstanding poet-savants — without spending time in Antulang.

Last month, on the third week of the 51st National Writers Workshop run by Silliman University, co-panelist Jimmy Abad and I were privileged to accompany the dozen writing Fellows for a full day’s session in Antulang.

It’s one of the workshop’s welcome features: that one day of each of the three weeks is given over to a session afield, as a change of pace from the daily examination of manuscripts now held at the Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village in Camp Lookout in the mountain town of Valencia.

This year that day of the third week fell on a Tuesday. Was I glad to hit the sea, a beach, an infinity pool and the great Southern outdoors barely 24 hours after arriving in “Dagets,” as another fond appellation would have it.

Something was missing that day in Antulang: the warm personal welcome usually provided by Annabelle Lee-Adriano, her husband Edo, and their precocious teen-aged daughter Ana, better known as Suyen. The family was in Manila to help mark a milestone for a relation.

Annabelle asked me over e-mail to proxy for her in “hosting” the workshop. The most formidable task was not so much to break the kids into the wondrous place (there were workshop director Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, Jimmy, and S.U.’s English Dept. secretariat tag team of Alana Narciso and Parts Partosa to help in that general chore.

Antulang also happens to have the most impressive private library in the island of Negros. Right by the resort’s gate is a modest one-room building that houses part of a collection of over ten thousand literary titles — all lovingly sorted out and “shelved” by a triumvirate of literature lovers: Annabelle, her fellow Sillimanian Bron Teves, and Dr. Cesar “Sawi” Aquino, also a regular workshop panelist.

Now, since Sawi has added the fear of traversing national highways to his old one — of flying — the absent Annabelle tasked me to what is most appropriately called the Edith L. Tiempo Reading Room.

Actually, Annabelle and I have been thick as thieves over sundry matters other than mapping out a phobia-free future for that savant Sawi. Through her, I’ve met a good number of Dumagueteños beholden to the arts, among them the excellent photographers Greg Morales and Urich Calumpang, visual artists Muffet Villegas, Hersley Ven Casero, and Lito Aro (Antulang’s resident artist), Silimanian Arlene Delloso Uytinchao, Wing and Nonoy Del Prado who run the Florentina Homes in Dumaguete where Jimmy and I lodge, and their kids Ramon (an animation artist), Gabby (the gourmet chef behind Gabby’s Bistro), and Carmen (a filmmaker).

All in all, it’s become an even more wonderful world of fond familiarity whenever I get a chance to “do” Dumaguete — which I try to again and again.

I’ve been so indebted to Annabelle and Edo (and to Annabelle’s genial folks, whom I’ve also met) not only for the freebie weekends in a pool villa overlooking the sea, but the host of really good people I’ve gotten to meet, like, and admire.

Another exceptional couple that happens to be Antulang neighbors down the road, Karl and Ophanie Aguila, also happens to occupy a desideratum of a place. Any visitor goes wow upon being invited to the work-in-progress — both a home and a haven — that sculptor-builder Karl continues to create atop a ridge overlooking scenic Tambobo Bay and privy to spectacular sunsets on a daily basis.

Originally from Negros Occidental and schooled in sculpture in California and Europe, Karl purchased the property in Siaton several years ago and decided to build his home and workshop there.

Since he’s a genius in working with wood, stone, and vintage materials, the architectural marvel that he now inhabits with his wife Phanie and their one-year-old boy Rafa the stuns the eye from outside in. At first sight, it looks like a dwelling place straight out of the American Southwest, with decidedly “pueblo” influence. Earth tones and soft walls left themselves to hints of Mexican, Mayan and Mediterranean touches.

But the modest façade of bricks and earth walls also offers a unique feature that spells temple and betrays a unique, perhaps eccentric artist as occupant. The form of a quasi-mythological creature juts out and lords it over the uppermost part of the front wall, above the clay-tiled eaves and main portal. It is a horned eagle, that is, the head of an eagle that has grown a ram’s curving horns.

Entry through that portal elicits another wow. A large bay window facing the door is literally that: through it one is greeted by the first haunting view of Tambobo Bay, that picturesque and most serene inlet providing shelter to dozens of international pleasure craft.

Coursing through the Aguilas’ main floor, one is met by various unique artworks that have been crafted by the master of the manor himself: buffet tables, cabinets, chairs, benches, hat racks, false doors, et al. Each is a unique sculpture, incorporating old wood, driftwood, and inspired design that makes every piece a sterling example of functional art.

Take a step down to a sitting area, but you don’t, can’t stop there, sit there, not at first reckoning, because the outdoors with that splendid panorama enter the house and beckon. So step out into a terrace, from where the options call for proceeding a level lower, right back to the ground, or up the machuca-tiled steps to a roof deck.

 Here are more elements of a private mythology on display on a wall, the same one where its other side features the niche with the eagle-ram. And beyond that wall is a 360-degree sweep of serial views: Mt. Talinis or Cuernos de Negros to the northwest, the sea and Apo Island to the east, the scenic bay below, down down south, and undulations of forest and ridges to the west.

Now get back down to a patio setting for wine and appetizers and that prolonged sunset a la El Greco, and when evening sets in, step back onto that main terrace and dine with Karl and Phanie, on superb food she has prepared, and wash all that down with tawny port before you move on to your preferred digestif, this time an Isle of Jura Ten Years, island single malt, and hearty conversation with beautiful people, and it is heaven once again on your beloved island of Negros.

Karl recounts how Wig Tysmans had also visited some weeks back, and I wonder how terrific his photographs of the place would surely be. Karl also tells of a recent trip to Baguio where he was awed by the BenCab Museum, and remembers how the National Artist guided him through his own grand version of Eden, inclusive of the Erotic Art Gallery. 

I tell Karl that he’s still quite young, in his middle 30s, but that we should expect him to follow in Ben’s giant footsteps in establishing a repository of art as well as cultural artifacts in his own pride of place. I say I recall how back in the ‘70s, we used to joke about William Henry Scott up in Sagada and Dr. Albert Faurot in Dumaguete as northern and southern counterparts, for scholarship and music.

Karl is modest. A long way to go, he says, what Ben has done is unassailably unreachable. Yet he says he’s putting up his workshop station soon, lower down the ridge. And already he’s attracted Kitty Taniguchi — who cast the great lions in terracotta that guard the Aguila terrace — to set up her own studio on property right across that of the Aguilas.

It is yet another step for what started out as Atelier Aguila in Bacolod, established in 2004, when the company affiliated itself with the Associations of Negros Producers that now showcases their products yearly in the Rockwell Tent. This year it will be billed as the 27th Negros Trade Fair and run from Sept. 26 to 30.

From Karl’s literature, we share the following:

“Atelier Aguila is a company that handcrafts contemporary art furniture and accessories using recycled, salvaged and antiquated materials of wood and stone. We produce limited handcrafted masterpieces of fine art furniture and objects that are executed by passionate labor utilizing the most sensitive materials in recycling fashion. We aim to inspire a discriminating connoisseur who values high aesthetics, original concepts, and environmental matters.”

In 2009, participating in the NCCA’s Sungu-an 5 show at the Museum of the Filipino People, Aguila exhibited “The Bridge Project” — constructed from recycled wood and installed above a river of brown sugar. Sugar was also poured on the bridge’s joints, “just as a mason would use cement to seal gaps.” 

Karl was said to have mused “on the bridge’s dual role. As it subverts one from the current of water beneath, it also propels one forward, connecting towards one’s goal.”

More power to Karl! May Atelier Aguila thrive on that ridge of spectacular sunset views and superb art, on that island of our singular/plural affections.