1980 / Bamboo / 910 x 121 x 182 cm / Artist: Francisco Verano / Cultural Center of the Philippines collection.

In his bamboo sculpture, Verano handles indigenous materials with distinct character and charm. His fascination with bamboo goes back to 1971 when he exhibited a large open construction of bamboo poles assembled in loose grid patterns, bringing out the qualities of lightness and linearity. His use of bamboo brings to the fore the organic quality of the material that resides in its particularly smooth texture and in the swelling nodes that mark the stages of its straight and rapid growth. Because of its hollowness, the bamboo easily allows itself to be fashioned into vessels or pipes.

Verano was inspired by the use of bamboo as indigenous musical instruments—for example, the diw-diw-as or panpipes, balingling or nose flute, and gabbang or xylophone; thus he massed bamboo poles together to form a compact structure in Bamboo Fugue I. In this work, the variedly shaped cutouts and apertures at different heights suggest different tones and pitches, and at the same time serve to individualize each piece within the ensemble. While visual and tactile in appeal, the sculpture makes strong auditory allusions to bamboo pipes in counterpoint, producing the distinctly reedy sound as of breezes passing through a green and sunlit grove.