From hand-painted ceiling fresco depicting a revered tradition, to hand-carved figures of tigpang-kalamay and tigpanghimo og koon, Bohol churches are getting popular for its trivial details hidden in plain sight.
If the Loboc Church of Saints Peter and Paul still has a painting depicting the Lady of Guadalupe Extremadura saving the town from the November 26, 1876 flood, thanks to Canuto Avila and companion painters, Alburquerque Church of Santa Monica also has early Boholanos detailed at the bottom of the newly carved baroque altar, thanks to Arsenio Lagura Jr., and his team of wood-carvers.
FATHER’S SON. Alburquerque woodcarvers now occupy a small shop within the church complex, doing repairs, restorations and commissions for church religious icons, thanks to that workshop in 2016. (PIAbohol)
And while Loboc church frescoes, not murals, were done in the 1920’s, the Alburquerque carvings came in 2017, when the Lagura-led group completed the intricately carved altar featuring baroque pierced carvings and gothic sunburst with he dove symbolic of the holy spirit.
Long before Boholanos identified Alburquerque as the home of artisanal Asin Tibuok, the town’s calamay and vanishing pottery industry which the town is known for.
“Aron mahinumduman,” Lagura shared when asked what motivated him to include the carved images in the wooden retablo.
Lagura, who used to work at a furniture shop since his teens, has since tried sculpture, because he needed to use a skill when wood-working became a little bit of a bore for him.
It was after the earthquake in 2013, that Lagura picked up an enhanced skill when he and several Boholano wood carvers joined the Sandugo Lalik Festival, he shared.
“The lalik festival aims to develop and enhance the wood-carving skills of local artisans and boosting livelihood,” former local seminary rector and Alburanon priest Fr. Valentino Pinlac was quoted in news interviews.
OLD AND NEW. The lalik festival in 2016 produced new urnas which were sourced out using old discarded wood, and allowed new carvers to experiment on the design motifs for localization.
The festival has workshops on wood carving featuring the urna and the nail-less joinery technology of the mortise and tenon, and capped with the Boholano urna carving competition, which Lagura won hands down.
With the help of the National Commission for Culture and Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, the Provincial Government of Bohol and the Diocese of Tagbilaran, local word carving workshop was held.
“While the festival marked the formal rebirth of the long-forgotten urna wood-carving tradition of Bohol, the subsequent project of building the period appropriate main altar (retablo mayor) became the biggest challenge,” Lagura recalls, in an interview years back.