Sculpting Paper

When Ben Gonzales begins to fold paper, his class falls silent. His students for the day–a small, usually boisterous group of children from the Virlanie Foundation–sit in rapt attention, watching him at work. The 81-year-old artist holds a pair of scissors in one hand, and slowly, deliberately, runs the tip of one blade across a sheet of paper. Other than the occasional whisper among the children, the rasp of scissors against paper is all that can be heard in the lecture room in the Ayala Museum.

At one point, the whispering becomes distracting for the artist. "You," he says, pointing at the offender, a girl who, understandably, shrinks into her seat. "Are you listening? Go to another table. Sit over there." He speaks with the tone of a stern schoolmaster, and the chastised girl is quick to comply. "You have to be here, to make this," he says to the now-completely silent class. "Not only physically here, but mentally here, mentally present. Look at this pair of scissors," he says, and raises the blades over his head. He then lowers it onto the paper, makes a final flourish, folds the sheet again, then raises the  paper snake sculpture he had made.

The children murmur excitedly. Some clamor for their own paper so they could try it out. Ben Gonzales smiles, with large, even white teeth, the childlike grin of someone who still thoroughly enjoys the wonder of turning something flat and two-dimensional into a living, three-dimensional work of art.

The art form is called Gupit-Gupit, and its creator, Ben Gonzales, has just given a demonstration to the children. "This is not your parents’ origami," according to his how-to book, Paper, Scissors, Sculpt! "Origami is geometrically folded paper," explains Gonzales, after the lecture. "Very formulaic, with lots of rules. There is a certain way you have to fold, a certain way to create specific shapes. Gupit-Gupit involves scoring, creasing and cutting, and is very  informal. There are many techniques, you know, but not so many rules."

While the shapes and concepts in his book are simple, Ben Gonzales uses Gupit-Gupit techniques to come up with dizzyingly elaborate paper sculptures. In his exhibit in the Ayala Museum, a wooly mammoth, fur and all, stands inside its glass case. A paper eagle snatches a paper fish out of the water. Gonzales shows pictures of his other work:  three-dimensional portraits of Mark Twain and Ben Franklin; a regal Maharajah rides an elephant; a fleet of shrimp boats haul in their catch. Many pieces are made from a single piece of paper.

Other pieces are humorous, even whimsical: a cartoonish Swedish warrior, in full Viking regalia, raises a flag over his head. A shirtless man takes a nap on an intricate paper hammock, his rake leaning against his ample gut. A caricature-couple, elderly and almost identical in their large, bulky paper coats and hats, takes an evening stroll. 

 Despite the intimidating complexity of some of his works, Gonzales insists that anyone, at any age, can do Gupit-Gupit. To illustrate his point, the octogenarian pauses, leaning on his cane, and bends close to help an eight-year-old boy make a paper butterfly.  

Gonzales’s awareness of shape, color and form began early in life. He remembers, as a child in his native Albay, watching his yaya fold palm fronds into decorative patterns. His mother was a dressmaker who ran a small dressmaking school ("The first things I learned to cut and fold were clothes."). His father was a salesman, and then a local manufacturer, of cosmetic products.

 It was also early in life that a debilitating disease changed his life.

Gonzales contracted a rare condition called osteomyelitis, a painful, chronic, bacterial infection of the bone and bone marrow that causes inflammation and prevents blood from reaching bone tissue. It began, he says, in his teens, when he fell off a carabao, and broke a leg. The break was complicated by an infection, which later developed into full-blown osteomyelitis.

"This was way back in the day, you understand," says the artist. "Pre-war. Back then, there were no doctors or equipment in the country to treat something like this." His son Guy recalls, "My father told me, once, about how (Philippine doctors) had to remove part of the infected bone, without anesthesia, with a chisel and hammer." He grimaces. "They eventually wanted to just amputate the leg. When my father got to the States for the procedure he needed, the best surgeon in the city took his case on for free." With the help of an American Jesuit he had befriended in Manila, Gonzales moved to New York for treatment.

 While recuperating and undergoing therapy after his operation, the 22-year-old came across an ad in the newspaper for the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a renowned polytechnic university in New York that offers full scholarships for its engineering, architecture, and art courses.  He applied for a scholarship, was accepted, and a year later, entered the university for a degree in commercial design and graphic arts. "Looking back," says Gonzales, "that disease, even if it made life difficult, was a blessing."

After graduation, he taught at the New York City School of Art and Design. "I wanted to teach, because I grew up around educators. Also, because teaching gave me a lot of free time, for my art." Gonzales began with more traditional media: wood and clay, bronze and terra cotta and plaster. He signed his works "Taal Mayon," as a salute to his Philippine roots.

On display in the Ayala museum today was a wooden horse, made early in his career and shipped from New York. A paper horse, painstakingly detailed with saddle and bridle, is part of the paper sculpture section of the exhibit.  The artist shows more of his work, and shows the dozens of horse sculptures he had made in his six-decade long career as an artist. They are made in a variety of media, in several abstract forms.

"I keep going back to the horse," Gonzales explains, "because, you know, it’s one of the oldest subjects of art. Early man painted horses on cave walls. I want to show that with one subject matter, no matter how old, there is always a new interpretation, something that hasn’t been done before. I’ve been making horses for as long as I can remember. When we moved to Manila, in my youth, the streets were full of horses and kalesa. That might have had something to do with it.

"And," he leans in, grinning, "they’re a very male symbol, you know. Very macho, very phallic." He sits back and laughs, again. 

"Gupit-Gupit began when I was teaching in high school, in the fifties. I began making simple paper sculptures to help with the learning process. What better way to show students what a cube is, than to make a real one, out of paper?

Then from the cube I found I could make variations. Like a prism, for example, or a cone. I began to make complex forms, and everything just went from there."

The beauty of Gupit-Gupit, according to Gonzales, is that it is very accessible. It takes only paper, scissors and glue. The intricate designs are a matter of patience, and careful planning. Making the portrait sculptures, he says, were as much trial and error as technique. Another virtue of paper as a medium, apparently, is the ease with which one can throw it away and start over.

Over the years, Gupit-Gupit gained a following among the artists that went through that high school in New York. "I’ve had so many students in so many years. Even now, when I walk down the street in New York, someone would come up to me and go, ‘Hi, Professor Gonzales!’ and I’d go ‘Who are you?’"

Ben Gonzales became a licensed examiner for the New York City Board of Education, and was instrumental in designing the Board’s rating chart for sculpture. Recently, his dream to spread the word about Gupit-Gupit came to fruition with the release of his book, Paper, Scissors, Sculpt! in the U.S.  Soon, he hopes, it will be distributed in the Philippines.

It is surprising that the show in Ayala Museum is his first major exhibit in his native country in more than 40 years. Back in the 60s, he was part of a group exhibit by Filipino-American Artists, but has since been absent from the Philippine art scene. Gonzales admits to not being particularly focused on exhibiting his work in general: "When you create for an exhibit, other factors come into play, you know. What the audience wants. What the gallery wants. You have to show in the right places and get the right agents. I’ve never really gone out of my way to make my works commercially-viable. It’s mostly been the joy of creation."

And this joy has been taught, not only to the hundreds of students that have sat in his classrooms, but also to the members of his family. Beside his pieces in the museum, several paintings by his son, Guy, and his brother Ralph, are on display, along with works by nieces, nephews and grandchildren. The old artist is proud that the creative spark has been passed on to his sons, one of whom is a writer and a painter, and the other a director for Marvel Comics.    

Having retired from teaching, will Ben ever stop sculpting? He shakes his head. "I don’t think I can ever get rid of it," he smiles, almost ruefully. His son adds, "I think people should watch out for it. It’s been a while, but my father, he’s still got a few plans."

The Taal Mayon/Gonzales family art works will be on exhibit at ArtAsia at SM Megamall (EDSA, Mandaluyong) from January 17 to 30. The exhibit will focus on one-piece paper sculptures for children. A live demo of gupit-gupit paper sculpture will be conducted during the opening on January 17.