Beauty out of a deadly storm's debris

Julie Lluch with driftwood that looks like arms grasping stones

In a strange way, the logs and trees that came tumbling down when Typhoon Sendong let loose three months' worth of rainfall in one night on Iligan City were victims of neglect like the flood's human victims. Sculptor Julie Lluch, who was born and raised in the city, dislikes it when the term "killer logs" is used.


After the retrieval of bodies and relief work, usable logs were stockpiled and commandeered by the city government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for the building of new houses. These were cut for lumber and distributed.

Fuentes sees the figures of three women coiled around each other in this piece.

Unheeding of superstitious beliefs that the storm's flotsam was haunted by voices of the flood victims, a curious Lluch and her sister Almita L. Cruz saw potential for art.  In February this year, they made countless trips to and from Barangay Saray where logs and debris were beached along a five-kilometer coastline. They saw many beautifully shaped driftwood. Cruz recalled, "A lot of it was grotesque, but there was beauty in it. Nobody touched them, except to use as firewood. People marked them for firewood on first
come, first served basis."


Barangay Captain Robert Fuentes described the calamity period: "The logs were so many that they looked like they had formed an island." Some stood 47 feet tall with a width that couldn't be embraced by four adults. He discouraged barrio folks from making charcoal out of the debris for selling to lechon makers and showed them what could be done with the tree's roots as an alternative livelihood from the traditional fishing and broom-making.


His carpentry hobby enabled him to show them how buyers from Manila and Cebu were willing to shell out P35,000 from a sala set made of driftwood. It was an exercise in turning a setback into something positive.

Almita Lluch Cruz seated on a bench she had done work on.

Almost balletic grace

He met the Lluch sisters who were thinking of working along the same lines. The three are part of the show "Debri(s)efing Art: An Exhibit of Found Natural Sculpture" at Lluch's residence at the Lluch Park Garden in Palao, Iligan City. The show ran until Oct. 6. Visitors enthused that the works deserve wider viewing. There were talks of bringing them to Cagayan de Oro City and if a sponsor can be found, to Manila.


Cruz recalled her initial hesitance in getting involved, "I was too busy with rehabilitation, the distribution of food, receiving guests and donors in behalf of my son (Mayor Lawrence Cruz) and taking care of my family. Then I saw these fantastic shapes on the shore." In the past, she had gone into plant rentals and the occasional landscape jobs for friends to finance her hobby of collecting plants and making dish gardens. The exhibit was her first time to work with driftwood. She saw it as a way of "sharing with the people what we had seen and preserve it. We didn't count the costs. This made us see that we can't move things without people."


Saving pieces of wood required digging them up and pulling them from the sand. Cruz said a piece jutting out was "like the tip of the iceberg." When they dug deeper, they found something bigger that took from 10 to 12 persons to carry. These were hauled to Lluch's open-air garden pavilion by dump truck or by motorized pedicab depending on the size.


Cruz said of the editing process, "I'd look at a piece, follow some principles of bonsai where nothing jars the eyes." Most of the time the sisters agreed on what to make out of something which explains why the works are unsigned or untitled. Collaboration was the key.


The Lluch sisters, Fuentes and a team of six workers worked with small chain saws, rooters, grinders with different teeth, small sickles, plain saws, sand paper for a good six months. The pieces received a final coating of Tuff Coat to enable them to withstand the elements when exposed outdoors.

Rich texture

The types of wood Lluch only heard from her father and grandfather when they talked about their timber concession business in the old days became visible and palpable to her: apitong, balayong, dao, lauan, tugas.

Forms freed from debris and arranged in the Lluch family's garden

She said whoever looks at the work sees what he/she wants to see: orchids, sailboats. Fuentes said a particular driftwood seemed like a whale from a distance when he saw it floating in the sea with children riding on it. He pulled it in and turned it into a bench.

Cruz pointed out parts of a driftwood where she saw "violent bruises" from the uprooting and tumbles it went through.

The three all felt elated at what could come out of debris that might have ended up as ashes.--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files/Yahoo Philippines, Oct. 3, 2012.

Mock battle between opera and Broadway to answer cry in the dark

The inbox delivered another call for help. Our very own Lissa Romero of Baguio and Quezon Cities, one of the few Pinays I know who can sing German lieders, will perform with Hong Kong-based opera singer Wayne Yeh on March 26 at 7:30 p.m. at the Isla Ballroom at EDSA Shangri-la Hotel for a worthy cause--the Sendong survivors.
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In the early hours of Dec. 17, 2011, Typhoon Sendong produced a flood of epic proportions that swept away entire communities located in the path of destructive water in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City.

On that day, any semblance of normality was swept away and replaced with the horrific reality of over 3,000 persons dead or missing, the grief of orphaned children as well as orphaned parents, 342,000 persons displaced and housed in evacuation centers or tent cities, trying to pick up the pieces of their nearly unrecognizable lives.

Typhoon Sendong left its indelible marks not only on the landscape, but on the psyches of its victims as well. To date, 56 people have attempted to or succeeded in taking their own lives, and in some heartbreaking cases, the suicides were young children. Teenage pregnancy, as well as cases of rape and incest, are on the rise in tent cities and evacuation centers where privacy is almost non-existent, and the inhabitants have no recourse to relieve their increased and prolonged tensions.

Art of Living Teacher and Cagayan de Oro resident Julie Ang was one of the lucky ones, living only 500 meters away from those who were swept away by the floods. She sprang immediately into action, driving through mud and rocky roads to evacuation centers and gave Art of Living workshops designed for trauma relief such as Breath Water Sound (BWS), as well as the Part 1 Breathworks course, designed to give participants stress relief and physical and mental benefits through yoga, simple breathing techniques and meditation.

With the help of volunteer Art of Living teachers who flew in from Manila, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as partnerships with NGOs in CDO and Iligan devoted to relief and rehabilitation (such as Save the Children and Child Fund), over 2,000 people received this much-needed “psychosocial intervention”. But there are thousands more that haven’t been reached, and Julie’s phone has been ringing non-stop as organizations take notice of the positive effect BWS and Part 1 courses have on the participants, and requests flood in for more of these workshops to be given.

Hong Kong-based opera singer and full-time Art of Living teacher Wayne Yeh and musical theater performer and Art of Living volunteer Lissa de Guia met when they found themselves giving a BWS workshop to children in Indahag in Cagayan de Oro City. Three days later, they found themselves singing together at a quickly organized fundraising dinner, in between teaching courses. Their chemistry and skilled performances inspired the Art of Living community to organize a bigger fundraising event to raise resources needed to sustain their efforts to continue giving their courses in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.

Wayne and Lissa agree that divine providence is what brought them together on the same volunteer mission, and they are pleased that they are asked to share their blessings in more than one way with those affected by Typhoon Sendong.

Wayne has been singing since the age of nine, and was a member of Young Friends of Opera New Zealand and performed for renowned soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. He joined Opera Hong Kong in 2005 and has sung in Turandot, Mozart’s Requiem,Carmen, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, Romeo and Juliette, Aida, Manon and Verdi’s Requiem.

In 2009, he won the Hong Kong Youth Singing Festival in operatic aria, open class male. In the same year, Wayne made his European debut as a soloist in Offenburg, Germany and later in the Helsinki Peace Concert at Valkoinen Sali, Finland. He was also invited by the International Association for Human Values to perform at the Corporate Culture and Spirituality Conference held at the European Parliament. He continues to train under notable voice coaches Rita Patane and Pietro Spagnoli in Milan, Italy.

Lissa’s musical theater career began as she joined the original German cast of Miss Saigon in Stuttgart. She also played the role of Narrator in the original German cast of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the first Filipina to play the role on the international stage. She understudied the role of Mimi in the original German cast of RENT, and played the role of Gigi in Miss Saigon UK Tour.

She attended the full-time acting program in HB Studio, New York, where she trained in voice under Tony and Emmy Award-winner Helen Gallagher. After “retiring” from a full-time theater career, Lissa shifted to a career in writing, and has written for international documentaries (LABAN: The Meaning of the EDSA Revolution), as well as respected publications as Town and Country and Esquire Philippines. She is also a writer of books, and is currently working on a biography.

In their March 26, 2012 fundraising show "Opera vs Broadway: A Benefit Concert for Typhoon Sendong Survivors," Wayne and Lissa stage a mock battle between Opera and Broadway, setting the tone with the song “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better” from the hit musical Annie Get Your Gun by Irving Berlin. Wayne proves Opera’s case as he sings favorites such as Figaro, Toreador and Bella Sicome, while Lissa retaliates with eleventh-hour solos from Broadway and West End favorites such as Les Miserábles, Miss Saigon, King and I and The Wiz. This Opera and Broadway mash-up is unprecedented, but as thrilling as it sounds, it is only an excuse for these two artists to continue showing their love to those in need. It is their hope that these fundraising activities will sustain the efforts of Art of Living Philippines in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, so that each and every person affected by Sendong receives not only relief, but also the tools for living better, more peaceful lives.

The Art of Living Foundation is one of the largest volunteer-based non-profit educational, charitable and humanitarian organizations holding special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. The Art of Living Foundation also focuses on conflict resolution, disaster and trauma relief, poverty alleviation, empowerment for women, prisoner rehabilitation, and environmental sustainability. Today it has chapters in over 145 countries. More than 100 million people worldwide have participated in the Art of Living workshops. The programs are found to engender a greater sense of belongingness as well as a feeling of responsibility towards humanity as a whole.

In the Philippines, Art of Living volunteers have received accolades for their work in rehabilitation programs for inmates at Bilibid prison, and in trauma-relief efforts following typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, and Sendong. Volunteers have teamed up with the Red Cross to provide trauma relief workshops (called the Breath Water Sound program) to thousands of people in evacuation centers. Breath Water Sound uses meditation, yoga and breathing techniques to help manage the stress of those suffering from traumatic events.