This Christmas season marks the debut of Anna Varona, who has come up with a show of new sculptures at Boston Gallery. Her work is a welcome addition to the growing line of Philippine sculptors, particularly women whose numbers remain small in the country. Varona joins the company of Julie Lluch, who has given her great encouragement as well as Agnes Arellano, Impy Pilapil, Charito Bitanga, Tala Contreras, Aba Dalena, Jenny Cortes and Ivi-Avellana Cosio, who does both painting and sculpture. A possible reason why not many women artists have gone into sculpture is the medium – whether wood, metal, or stone, it usually requires physical strength, as well as great dexterity from the artist.
In the case of the new sculptor, Varona, the medium of clay does not significantly constitute problems of weight, especially in the relatively small forms she turns out, although they can also be surprisingly heavy. As to the process involved, she says that clay is one of the most challenging of art media, although it is, after crayons, the first that is introduced to children in art making. For Varona, it involves both time and infinite care in the various processes that clay sculpture involves, since clay is, at the same time, hard and fragile. According to her “I enjoy working with the material because it brings me back to earth. The material has limitations therefore reminding me of my own.
It makes me truthful to myself and with this, there is no judgment, only acceptance – and with acceptance comes dignity, freedom and beauty”.
In the process of formation, clay evolves like a human being continually in change. Varona believes in communicating with the piece she is working on, just as a gardener talks to his plants to make them respond to his loving care. She communicates to them mainly in her hands as she wedges and kneads them until the wet mass becomes pliable, almost like wax. Soon, the medium will dry into a leather-hard state, turning to black, a crucial stage because cracks may form. The artist has to wait for it to become bone-dry, when it is ready for bisque firing in the kiln at 1000 degrees centigrade that will make it hard, brittle and porous. This is also where surprises may come in, never quite the same as the piece was envisioned. Glazing and cooling make up the last stage, where the figure acquires color and sheen that give it a precious quality. Varona concludes that like life, “you need to be forgiving and accepting, and most of all unwilling to give up.”
With the process summarized, Varona does not regard it as a purely technical activity requiring mental dexterity to realize a form. For, more than anything else, she has a personal intimate approach to each piece. Each one is drawn out of the depths, so that creating one becomes the material expression of a deeply felt struggle, aspiration, or search that she has tenderly coaxed of out the material that she now holds to herself like a mirror. Salaming Bulag is an example, consisting of two figures facing each other. They are both one and the same: the first lovingly scrutinizes the face of the other, reaching out with groping sensitive fingers, feeling the mold of eyes, temple and cheekbones, and how they have been shaped by life and its experiences, the fingers solicitously asking with endearment: “How has life treated you?” At the same time, it is also an image of the quest for the identity, what woman has gone through, what she has stood for, or what she has emerged from as a survivor. This piece conveys deeply felt quality; it is as though the artist kneaded material for it to acquire the stuff of life.
Si Felicia ang Martir is unusually poignant, possibly stirring feminist sentiments. The figure consists of two parts: one, a torso bending back and touching the ground with superhuman effort; and two, the head of the martyr herself resting in death on the ground. There is a strong contrast between the dynamic tension of the overstretched torso and the still head with its half-smiling and peaceful expression. Possibly derived from her life as wife and mother, but whether personal or general, it strikes a nerve in women, and men likewise, in their interrelational exchanges.
The closeness of the sculptures to her personal self is likewise conveyed in the expressive works Sa Aking Isip, Alipin sa Puso, Ipaglalaban Ko and other pieces.
Sa Aking Isip exposes the full potential of the medium and what depth it may convey, as the clay becomes transformed into a thinking face, the force of its spiritual energy breaking out in two antennae-like forms on its head. The expression is so inwardly absorbed, without the least distraction, but so pure in its concentration. As in her other works, there is no effort to idealize but always to seek the lineaments of truth, as the features become signifiers of feeling and value.

Alipin sa Puso is more outward in spirit, as it faces the world with a fierce cry issuing from its circular mouth, the figure geared for battle like a warrior with chest, shoulder and waist emblazoned with a regalia of silver, gold, and red. As in her other figures, the artist clearly does not observe classical symmetry in the limbs, but uses disequilibrium to add sharpness to the quality of figure.
Ipaglalaban Ko achieves the point where realism slips into expressionism. Uncannily enough, the face does not shout but is instead quietly, but strongly, resolute in its half-closed but focused eyes, its high eyebrows and prominent cheekbones, all in all a strongly modeled face with not a hint of distraction or loose transitions.
Nevertheless, Varona owes some debt to classical mythology when she alludes to Persephone or Demeter, as in Ang Pagdadalaga ni Perseponya (Persephone) or Demetria ang Ina. But the debt is possibly not only that of the nomenclature of personages, but a base which she begins with but in the process explores and distorts in order to bring out other directions and meanings, arriving at startling effects. Ang Pagdadalaga ni Perseponya (Persephone) shows the girl emerging fully and sinuously from a dark enclosing medium, as though to affirm her coming of age. Demetriya ang Ina recalls the truncated Venuses, but without their undisturbed physical serenity, as it bears instead the marks of punishment on body or in mind creating strange configurations that one cannot readily name.
The figures of Varona certainly bear the marks of the best sculpture: That is, when the medium or material becomes transformed by the spirit of the artist, her intentions, aspirations, messages and values. In it, she will find the joy of expressing the truth and beauty, as well as achieving full humanity and freedom.