Their lush surroundings—a wild tangle of twigs, trees, free-roaming dogs, and a lone cat somewhere in an undeveloped subdivision of Dasmariñas, Cavite—furnish them with ample time and inspiration for their works.

Mac’s organically composited sculptures from plastic bag closures, pins, and other wherewithal of mass-produced packaging that have become chandeliers, clusters of jackfruit, or satellites of hanging lights invariably approximate microcosmic models of the universe or crystal structures, while Eugene’s constructions from shaved and sawn wood that’s been previously splattered with paint imply structures and an ever-evolving conception of a house. Eliciting bewildering awe, their works transcend the ordinariness of their materials by their intricateness with however they were twined, braided, bound, tied, meshed, glued, tacked, nailed, or strung together. It is being in the work itself, webbed in by the moment of solitary industry.

It’s a habit evolved in and by curiosity, by meditative routine, by determined, steady pace with the rhythm of night and day just as much as how colonies of insects build their hives and nests fashioned from foraged twigs, stems, sap, saliva and their bodily fluids. It’s all a process of making oneself a home, a space created from the essence of being and from within things, as dwelling itself is “always a staying with things” (M. Heidegger).

And with things being continually made and remade, hewn and sewn, hacked and nailed, sanded and painted, and the projects continually being planned, seized, executed, abandoned, taken-up again for the never ending to-do list of DIY home improvement schemes in and around and about the house—the accumulating fabric swatches, the pile of glued skate decks, the mounds of soil to be smoothed over as mini bike ramps, the trees and bushes to be pruned, the seeds and saplings to be planted, the bikes to be restored—for all these activities and much more, bodies act upon objects and the space around them; each defined by a function and the flow of kinesthesia among them,as being in a place and, more so, in a place we nurture for our self-preservation—our dwellings—and by which Heidegger poignantly points out that “the manner in which we dwell is the manner in which we are.”

Be it any part of this world as we dwell in such spaces and mark them with our habits; thus, we create the world with other dwellers.

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