Timeless treasures, each piece with its own story to tell.Artists have long dreamed of living in an Eden that complements their artistic process and enhances it. Living in a haven that’s conducive to artistic endeavors is the goal for many. For artist and renowned studio furniture maker Karl Aguila, moving to Siaton, Negros Oriental 16 years ago was a risk that he needed to take. And it was a risk that has paid off. When the San Carlos, Negros Occidental-born Aguila saw the beauty of the postcard-worthy Tambobo Bay, with its tranquil waters and lush greens surrounding it, he took a chance and stayed despite not knowing anyone in the area. It was his chance for independence from the comforts of where he grew up.
He’s well-regarded now as a studio furniture maker, but even a cursory glance at his creations would betray such a definition. Regardless of the craft or field he’s in, Karl Aguila is an artist through and through. Originally specializing in sculpture and having majored in Fine Arts at the prestigious San Francisco Art Institute, Aguila was immersed in conceptual art—a style that calls for deep intellectual rigor and critical thinking. Upon returning to the Philippines, he encountered the limits of his specialty. Living back in Negros, he discovered that connecting to an audience through such a cerebral form of art was challenging, even alienating. Realizing this, he shifted his focus from conceptual art to something more tangible and accessible.
Where the past meets the present, with a view that never fades.Furniture-making gave Karl Aguila an outlet for his creativity to flow. “Furniture making 20 years ago was like my therapy to continue being creative,” Aguila recalls. “Making a table, making a chair, making a sculptural shelf – it has a purpose. People understood it. It has a sense of place in the home. I like it like that. I don’t have the burden of explaining my work,” he stresses. It also offered him a connection between the artist and the audience – or in his case, client. Unlike the cerebral conceptual art that he had done, there’s not much thought needed with furniture: you make a chair, and people will sit on it. You craft a dining table, and people will eat from it. Simple. Practical. But wholly creative works of ingenuity and innovation that offer glimpses into Aguila’s brilliant mind.
In 2008, Karl Aguila founded Atelier Aguila. Originally a separate entity from his more artistic projects, the lines eventually blurred and the furniture he had created bore the signature style that he’s known for these days.
Aguila describes his early works as sculpturally defined. “The aesthetic is less practical than what I’m doing lately,” he explains. “The first three years were very labor intensive, using techniques of wood carvings and silhouettes. And the lines are three-dimensionally well thought of to simulate the sculpture.”
Every artist has a trademark, be it in colors used or forms and shapes. For Karl Aguila, his use of reclaimed materials is his. His signature, as he tells us, is “old timber from architectural salvage, or salvaged wood, or trees that fell from natural calamities or road projects”. It’s not just his functional sculptures that are practical – it extends to the materials that Aguila uses, as well.
He confesses that he doesn’t seek exotic woods for the furniture that he makes. He doesn’t discriminate against local, run-of-the-mill woods. Even wood from the humble Sambag tree, or Tamarind, has a place in Aguila’s workshop.
When asked about where he sources his materials, Aguila tells us, “We have so much materials on the island. If I drive, I’m always sensitive and aware of what’s beside the street. Whether in the city or on the outskirts of the city, there's always wood that's left to rot or decay. Or there's always a house that's about to collapse”.
Most of Aguila’s pieces have planks and slabs taken from old and abandoned haciendas, dilapidated ancestral homes, and sugar mills. The wood he has used in his furniture has been taken from towns and cities and roadsides all over Negros. From all the way north in Escalante to his hometown of San Carlos, from Bacolod to Zamboanguita. His studio furniture has literal pieces of Negros sent out onto the whole Philippines. One can only imagine the stories and ghosts attached to them.
Classic charm in every corner, where history lives on in every piece.Unsurprisingly, homes all over the country aren’t the only places where reclaimed wood and other materials are showcased. They are also widely used in his own Spanish Colonial-inspired home as practical elements that show his artistry. Everything from wrought iron bars on windows and bricks to leather-covered handrails on stairways. Shells are even used as aesthetic enhancements alongside stone walls.
Behind Karl Aguila’s calm and cordial demeanor is indeed the mind of a true artist. “I'm very intuitive when it comes to design,” he tells us of his method and process when he has material like a piece of wood in sight. He later adds, “I can already visualize it in my head. That's automatic”. There’s almost a collaborative effort between Aguila and the materials that he uses. He tells us that the material would inspire him on what it will become, whether it’s a stool, a bench, or a chair.
Aguila also tells us that inspiration can also come from the pressure of clients who challenge his artistic, problem-solving nature. “For example, they'll show you their house,” Aguila says, “but it has a very long narrow corridor that's very contemporary – it's very hard to make furniture for that purpose. So, I will think and I will look back at my inventory for what fits that atmosphere, that space.”
His inventory is housed in a massive workshop that’s a marriage between steel and tons of wood that are either racked up or leaning throughout the warehouse’s four corners. There are planks and slabs of wood all over, as well as doors forgotten by time and bancas far from where they’re designed to be. All are waiting to be breathed in with new life by industrial machines and the eight other artisans who labor to perfect Karl Aguila’s visions. The whole process from start to finish is 70 percent handmade – a figure that Aguila is proud of.
Resting in the echoes of the past, where every dream has a story.The pieces that Karl Aguila has crafted have found a following all over the country. Some of his clients fly to Negros just to visit his showroom, hopeful to have an Aguila original shipped back to their homes. Most of his pieces nowadays are commissioned, however. But when a visitor wants one already spoken for, Aguila tells us that they would have a similar looking one commissioned instead. Because of the intricacies and ingenuity that’s reflected in his pieces, it’s well worth the three-month wait. Speaking about his clients, Aguila tells us, “I'm lucky that my clients give me artistic license. For example, they want a table for 12 or 14. And they will just let me do it because precisely that's what they're paying for – my creativity. They're not going to show me a photo and say, ‘I want something like this’. In that sense, I'm blessed to have that trust.”
Decked on the main building’s second floor, Karl Aguila’s showroom doesn’t just display his works but also works by other local artists and artisans. There are paintings by other Negrense artists hung on the walls, as well as statement vases that combine his signature reclaimed materials and handicrafts by local basket weavers. It’s that spirit of unity and mutual love for the arts that made him envision Tambobo Bay as an artist’s commune. However, out of all his colleagues that he had invited to move to the bay, only a few accepted the invitation. The goal has changed since the early days of him and his family living in Eden.
Two creatives, one journey—where love and art intertwine.“My philosophy is,” Karl Aguila reveals to us, “if you make something special, even though you're out in the mountains or in the forest, people will seek you out because you created something different”.
“Atelier Aguila is now a brand that is not just focused on the furniture that I do, but more of the atmosphere that I create as a brand”, he announces. Karl and his family are planning to open their Eden to the world. The Aguila home will soon include a gallery and a café that will showcase his wife’s artisanal ice cream. “I want the people to come here and have an experience,” he tells us. Art, alfresco dining, and cocktails while overlooking the beautiful Tambobo Bay? A journey to Atelier Aguila is indeed worth the trip.
Article by: John Mari A. Marcelo
Photos by: Paolo Correa
