Extracting cash from Mayon’s rocks

22 March 2007
By Ephraim Aguilar
Daraga, Albay

VOLCANIC ROCKS SCATtered over barren fields would not mean much to ordinary people in Daraga town in Albay except as reminders of a tragedy for lahar survivors.

But for six years now, Vicente Ajero, 46, has been creating images out of the rocks, wielding a hammer and a nail used as chisel.

Ajero, who is called “Enteng Bato” in Barangay Busay near the Cagsawa Ruins, said he made his first sculpture after picking up a red rock while walking. He was fascinated by its color.

When he got home, he tried carving an image out of it with a hammer and a nail attached to a rubber pipe. He formed an image of Jesus Christ—his first artwork—in one week.

The image was important for him, he said. But, unfortunately, he lost it to a flash flood at the height of Supertyphoon “Reming.”

Volcanic rocks and other debris loosened from the slopes of Mount Mayon abound in surrounding lahar-struck villages like Busay, where Ajero’s Mayon Artstone Shop is found.

The shop is a 3-meter by 4-meter nipa hut that Ajero himself constructed. It is near the historical Cagsawa Ruins—traces of Mayon’s eruption in 1814 that killed 1,200 people and buried hundreds of houses in surrounding areas.

‘Buga’

It is easy to carve Mayon’s rocks, the hardened magma locally called the “buga,” because they are soft and brittle, Ajero said. He uses the same kind of stone to polish the surface of his sculptures.

Ajero lives alone in a room in a dwelling damaged by lahar at Busay. He lost his house in the neighboring town of Camalig to floods. In his solitude, he draws out his ideas and emotions for his sculptures or the songs he writes, he said.

The types and sizes of design vary in his shop. He carves human images, Mayon, the Cagsawa belfry, candle holders, chairs, tables and many other items.

One of the designs closest to his heart is the “mother and child image” that reminds him of childhood days. His mother is now almost blind and lives with one of his siblings.

No two designs can be exactly the same, Ajero said.

“My design would depend upon the rock. I don’t usually think much of what design I am going to carve. I don’t sketch it first on paper. I just do it and would end up with all these designs,” he said in Filipino.

Among his collections are a mother breastfeeding a child; Daragang Magayon, the folkloric woman whose grave became Mayon; a woman under bed covers, and an almost abstract image of a man and a woman making love.

The price of each sculpture depends on how big or complicated the design is. Prices range from P300 to P10,000.

Ajero finishes his sculptures in one day (for the simple designs) to at most one month (for the complicated ones.)

The Cagsawa belfry costs P300; mortar and pestle, P350; candle holder that looks like a dumbbell, P150-P200; and mother and child varieties, P2,500-P10,000.

All of Ajero’s sculptures are unpainted so that, he said, it would look authentic and natural. But some volcanic rocks come in colors other than the usual gray.

Lean sales

Ajero had thought that he could earn a living out of his stone art. He never really earned from his paintings and his folk songs.

He survives mainly by doing contractual jobs. He now works for a project of the municipal government to clean and landscape the Ligñon Hill, where the unfinished Mayon View Deck lies.

Not many people seem to be interested with his sculptures, he said. During lean months, he would sell only two items.

“Almost none of the foreign tourists and travelers buy my work because they are hard to carry since they are made of pure volcanic rock. But I just love doing this,” Ajero said.

Hope

Ajero said he still saw hope in his craft and that it might just take him out of poverty.

“When someone buys my sculptures, I use the money to buy food and other needs. When there’s none, I only rely on my income from my contractual jobs,” he said.

If someone who trusts in his skills would be willing to invest in him, he’d be willing to take it. “In putting up this small shop, I did not have any capital but only my mind, my talent, and the rocks I can freely pick anywhere,” he said.

A Filipino expression puts it, “Pera na naging bato pa.” But Ajero said he wanted to be known as a man who could make a living out of rocks and reverse the adage to “Bato na naging pera pa.”