MANILA, Philippines — Metals such as brass, iron, and stainless steel are often used by sculptors to express strength, aspiration, and grand gesture.  Artist Ferdinand “Ferdie” Cacnio, however, uses these hard and heavy materials to capture softness, sexiness, and light. His favorite subjects are dancers between 10 to 14 inches tall. They whirl like air, epitomize effervescence, and depict somersaults of thin lights that seem to surpass sound and speed. Although small, they are tantalizing, animated, attractive, graceful, naughty, passionate, and nice to touch, notwithstanding their cold metal bodies.

Cacnio’s fishermen and farmers in metal look hardy, small, and stable. Showing them in groups, Cacnio allows them to tell their stories as a class of simple folk and not as rugged and heroic individuals. They are subdued and not awesome.

“I break rules to innovate,” says Cacnio about his deliberate intention to tame and humanize metals which tend to be immobile, monumental, overwhelming, overpowering, and stiff.

“My works communicate to two different types of people. I love dancers because I used to dance when I was a teen-ager,” he says. His body has retained the memory of passionate dancing which he painstakingly recreates to arouse arduous life to his dancers in metal.

Making figures of fishermen and farmers, on the other hand, are like odes to his two lolos: Flaviano Cacnio, a fisherman in Malabon, and Francisco Reyes, a landlord in Nueva Ecija.

“When I sculpt fishermen and farmers in steel, ginagawa kong marami sila, gaya nung kumpol-kumpol na tao na ginagawa ko sa clay nung bata pa ako,” says Cacnio, 51, a late comer into the art scene, at 45 in 2005.

His artist father, Angel Cacnio, did not encourage him to become an artist. The older Cacnio was a painter and layout artist who designed the 25- and 50- centavo coins circulated in 1982 and 1983 and the P20 and P100 bills still being used today.

“When I was young, my friends played with toy dinosaurs, while I played with human figures and anatomical parts -- mga paa at kamay – that I fashioned in clay. I could sculpt and draw before I could read,” Cacnio recalls.

“I grew up watching my father work as a layout artist in Liwayway (Publishing); lagi akong nanonood sa kaniya,” says Cacnio. When he was about to finish high school, his father said, “Kung fine arts lang ang gusto mo, huwag ka nang mag-aral, para sa mahina lang ‘yan. Ang artist, isang kahig, isang tuka.”

In deference to his mother Mely who wanted him to be a doctor, Cacnio finished a Psychology degree at the University of the Philippines (UP) in 1981. He finished another degree in civil engineering, in 1985.

Two years after the assassination of former Sen. Beningo Aquino at the airport in 1983, the Philippine economy was down; there were no construction projects and Cacnio looked for other options.

“I sold the paintings of my father’s classmates and friends: Jose Joya, Florencio Concepcion, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, Napoleon Abueva, Cesar Legaspi, Ang Kiukok, and Tam Austria; it was easy selling them, ” he says. Visiting them in their homes gave him an insight into their creative processes.

“I became aware of their concepts (in composition and colors). By observing them, nagkaroon ako ng taste sa art,” he says. Cacnio earned well as a trusted art custodian of many interior designers. He shunned being an artist.

Instead, he became a party bug and disco dancer, dabbling in classical ballet at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Being the eldest of four siblings, he even earned money as a fish dealer in Malabon.

In 1988, at age 28, after marrying Rowena “Bing” Castro, a 1984 graduate of AB Economics in UP and 1988 MBA graduate of Asian Institute of Management, he put up Atelier Cacnio, a graphic design studio whose biggest client was Pfizer.

“I inherited my father’s talent and his clients,” he says. “I made innovations, and, soon, I became regarded as an authority on design concepts for being able to hew them to the needs of my clients.”

Between the birth of his children Paolo Gabriel in 1990 and Bianca Particia in 1996, he and his wife built a house at Tivoli Greens Verde in suburban Quezon City in 1993 . Despite his financial success, he was restless and aimless because of an unfulfilled dream. .

An epiphany occurred after 15 years with Atelier – in a conversation with his friend Cid Reyes, an artist and writer from the advertising world.

Reyes told it to him straight: “Yang mga ginagawa mo sa graphic design, yung box ng terramycin na denisign mo, hindi iisipin na art work iyan. Hindi ‘yan tinatago. Tinatapon yan.  Makakalimutan yan…Pang pera lang yan.”

Cacnio says, “At 45, I had a mid-life crisis and I turned to art. I willfully decided to become an artist.”

 With this psychological breakthrough, he made instant changes in his life. He turned his garage into a workshop, bought pliers, grinding tools, a 25 centavo-sized cutting disk used by dentists to make dentures, a blow torch to shape and connect metal sheets and even invented custom-built equipment to crimp them and make them billow. Aching to realize his dream, Cacnio refused to be sidelined by another psychological challenge: he felt that his younger sculptor brother Michael resented a new rival in the family.

Innovations

“Makinis ang aking welded brass. Kahit naka spot-weld siya, mukhang buo siya, hindi tagpi-tagpi,” he says of his works. He admits innovating on master sculptors Solomon Saprid and Ed Castrillo who made monumental pieces in metal. “Dapat iba ka sa nauna sayo,” Cacnio explains.

His innovations included colorful shoes and costumes for his dancers – who grabbed the spotlight in a show at the Community Facility, 26th Street in Taguig City ’s Bonifacio Global City in 2007.

Social commentaries

Social commentary is implicit in Cacnio’s three important sculptural works. In one, Cacnio shows a farmer with a sack of rice climbing up a broken wooden plank, during a two-man show with social realist Nunelucio Alvarado at Hans Brumman Gallery in Makati in 2008.

His Global Filipina depicts a female figure wearing a callado (embroidered) bustier, the head connected to the ceiling like a revolving globe. This piece was included in his first one-man show on dancers at the Avellana Gallery in Pasay City in 2005. In that year, it  won second prize at the annual competition of the Art Association of the Philippines .

With this achievement, Cacnio embarked on his second show, entitled High Spirits, also at the Avellana Gallery in 2006. This depicted slim and graceful women hanging like mobiles from the ceiling. They are not victims, he insists, adding he wanted to show that metals can depict flight, joy, levitation, and movement.

He improvised on the same motif, in 2008, when he made a slim, reclining, and nude woman buoyed up by a thick mass of hair that stays rooted on the ground. “It’s all about coming home. It is my version of the UP’s oblation,” he says. The UP Alumni Association is raising funds to make Cacnio’s work as big as the UP male oblation. It will be installed at the newly-refurbished CarillonPlaza .

Small details 

Delightfully small details were included in Cacnio’s small pieces: fish traders and fishermen’s houses on stilts.  These in a show entitled “Ode to Malabon” held at Manila’s Hiraya Gallery in 2007.

Naughty and Sublime Cacnio

In “Visual Diary,” at White Box in Cubao’s Shoe Expo in 2009, Cacnio’s wit and naughtiness were on display. The show represents man’s love life through his shoes. The shoes tell stories about “isang mamahalin, isang pakakasalan, isang first love at iba pa,” says Cacnio. Holding hands, the lovers actually indicate where their erogenous zones are. His use of mirror as a platform for his dancers is “for viewers to see what is underneath (the lithe legs).”

At the same time, Cacnio is an unabashed sculptor of sheltering trees (some look like forests) that cover multitudes of people, in a show at the LRI Design Plaza in Makati in 2010. Connecting small and big forms is all about “connecting with the Almighty,” he says.

Big work

Cacnio’s first large-sized sculpture entitled Pasasalamat, depicts fishermen with nets; it is installed between Rizal Drive and Third Avenue at the Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in Taguig. It was part of the developer’s public art-making project in 2006.

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