Kigao has not always been a visual artist, and probably will never be just a stereotypical artist. The first art medium he explored was music. In his younger days, when the pine scent of Baguio could still be savored way down from Kennon Road, Kigao was into composition. Composing songs and music was his life and it was well-expressed and performed during his search for the divine as he explored the different religious sectors in his teens. He played lead rhythm for a band that eventually disbanded, which led Kigao to seek other alternative groups. But his quest for the medium to express his art, as manifested today in all his endeavors, came when music no longer seemed enough.

In all forms where his art and medium diversify, Kigao is self-taught. There was no school to coddle this explorer.

Pointillism, despite its discipline and hard work, was his first medium. Kigao explored pointillism on wood, exploring portraits of genuine people and other images. Later, he moved away from what the eye could see in reality and veered towards what one could feel from what everyone else sees. Sculpture crawled its way into his being at a time when he was still trying all types of art expression.

1990 was the year he ventured into sculpture. Tolentino, Michelangelo, and Rodin influenced Kigao so much that he decided to try his hand in three-dimensional visual imagery on clay rather than on the strings.

Soon after, Kigao discovered that doing portraiture in sculpture came easy for him. Using clay, his fingers dance over the surface of the processed earth in varying levels of pressure to form a face, a figure. He was soon contracted by Des Bautista for the University of Baguio to shape the bust of Dońa Nena Bautista.

Other commissioned busts followed. The Communications Foundation for Asia commissioned him to create a death mask and bust for their late founder, Father Lagerway, which now stands on their gardens. He also did a bust for the late Armed Forces of the Philippines Gen. Job Mayo of the Philippine Military Academy, which is stands in the 104-year-old institution's Parents' Park. For every face he does, Kigao admits that he usually needs to fall in love with the face before he can get it right and truly give it a semblance of life and personality.

Kigao's personality manifests in all his works. Installation art and sculptural pieces, except for portraiture, shows how animism rules and influences his life, as a result of studying one religion after another. Animism is the only thing that he has found consistent in all the religions, and it is what gives him comfort and explanation about the divine.

His stand on socio-political issues reveals itself in the way each artwork is composed. Except when copying a truly remarkable face, Kigao has never held beauty, and the basic standards of art, in reverence. His work and principle, largely influenced by the late Santiago Bose is not based on beauty or reality, but in the concept of the piece.

Installation art is a medium that would best express his thoughts and concepts about the world. It is his favorite form of expression. Compared to portraiture, where there is no room for playing or establishing his personal concepts about his subject, installation art explores a multitude of mediums, materials and concepts, with limitless possibilities and ideas.

In 1993, an American Ambassador to the Philippines bought his sculptural work in Camp John Hay during the Fil-Am Friendship Day exhibit.

"But I think he only did that to remove the sculpture from the rest of the exhibit," Kigao commented. He never really did believe they could like the piece - a 3 by 1/2 feet candy-covered American flag made of wood, with a Filipino crawling outside from the opening of the wrapper. It was his version of Americans and it tells the whole world how Kigao felt about colonialism. The Ambassador bought the sculpture and it was never seen during the opening of the exhibit.

CICM then commissioned him to do the 14 Stations of the Cross using lead, as a virtual bas relief at the Maryhurst Seminary. They had to hike to Camp 6 and rapel over the tributary of the Bued river to get genuine driftwoods where the lead sculptures were mounted. The stations of the cross are still there at the Maryhurst Chapel for everyone to see.

During the Baguio Arts Festival in 1994, Kigao came up with Cuhol in Action, an installation of golden snails, pouring over a cracked hole in the wall of the exhibit area. Asia Pacific Art Magazine featured this work on the cover. The piece was his take on economic sabotage from the Americans - Kigao theorized that the US military introduces designer pests into Philippine farms in order to force farmers to buy American-made pesticide.

Commissioned installation works include the Fiberweb festival at the Baguio Convention Center during the early part the 1990s. Café by the Ruins also commissioned a group of artists - Kigao included - to install art work around the Café, twice in the late 1990s.

Also in the late 90s, Kigao set aside clay as he dabbled with paint, which was manifested in his back-to-back exhibit with Jose Tulas at the Tam-awan Village. His works focused on "womanity," and featured women in different difficult positions as they are castigated or discriminated against by society.

But his love for music could not be curtailed. In 2000, Kigao won second place in the song-writing competition of the Women's Health and Safe Motherhood Program with his "Hinugot sa Tadyang" piece. It describes how men can and should participate in women's emancipation from the strings of domesticity, in reproductive roles, and in decision-making in and outside the home.

Kigao has resumed his sculptural works. He was hired by the Department of Tourism in the year 2000 to cast three-dimentional marble shapes of indigenous peoples.

His one-man show at the Botanical Garden in 2001 featured pieces like "Culture for sale," "Divided culture" and what he fondly calls the "Long-necks". These interesting pieces were remnants of other commissioned works by the Panagbenga Flower Festival in 1999, where he was commissioned to do a Dap-ay token for the guests. The images of indigenous peoples surrounding the Dap-ay were dissected and individually turned into key chains that hang from pieces of driftwood. This bundle of key chains compose "Culture for sale".

Red paint, the color of blood, dominated "Divided culture," which signifies the division among the different Cordillera peoples. The divisions are marked by tribal wars and, at present, political and ancestral land issues. These two pieces contrasted with the elegant and literally-long necked pieces which filled the rest of the exhibit, and the soft rose petals scattered all over the floor to complement the poetic synopsis written by his life partner.

Currently a director of the Baguio Arts Guild Board, Kigao wants so much for the Guild to be a home for the other young artists - the way it has been for him. Doing collective and community work for the different sectors of youth, women, in relation to their issues regarding the environment and socio-political concerns, in whatever art form (music, visual and recently, even theatrical), the vision and exploration for this artist never stops.

Story by MAE ANN LLANZA

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