MANILA, Philippines ? Young artist José ?Jojo? Barcena Jr. has produced three monumental Marian shrines in the country. The latest and most popular among them is the rotating 30-foot statue of Mary, Regina Rosarii, Our Lady in the City, standing on top of a five-story building on Scout Fernandez, Barangay (village), Laging Handa, near Morato Avenue in Quezon City. The statue was commissioned by the Regina Rosarii Center for Contemplative Prayer, run by the Dominican Sisters of Regina Rosarii (OP Regina).

Barcena also crafted the replica of Our Lady of Peñafrancia, the icon venerated by millions of devotees every year in Naga City.

The artist is aware that it?s because his subject, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, is most venerated that people flock to see his works. But he doesn?t mind since he considers his aesthetic talent a divine gift meant for a specific mission?to create sacred spaces and images that spark the idea of the divine amid a world that has banished the sense of the sacred.

A certain level of humility, even shyness, seems to bind most of the celebrated sculptors in the country, and Jojo is not an exception. He looks so simple it is very difficult to distinguish him from any of his assistants.

Once, when he did a major project in Pasig City, a wealthy matron mistook him for a janitor and asked him to sweep the school grounds, which, of course, he willingly did. When the woman profusely apologized during the unveiling ceremony, he meekly smiled not because he felt vindicated but because he simply was meek of heart.

It is not difficult to see that for once the artist has acquired the qualities of his subject. Humility and simplicity are Marian virtues reflected in the masterpieces and in the life of Barcena.

Imitator, not creator

Perhaps one factor why Jojo, despite the beauty, grace and elegance of his monumental art pieces all over the country, which have become tourist sites and landmarks in their localities, has not broken into the elite and contemporary art scene the way other sculptors like Eduardo Castrillo had in their early 20s, is that Jojo does not consider himself as a creator but rather an imitator.

Perfect casting is a skill he has mastered as shown by the life-size statue of Pope John Paul II he was commissioned to do. It does not only bear an eerie, almost perfect semblance of the late Pontiff, it conveys even His Holiness? magnetic presence. Jojo likes to tell the story of how one of his friends, when shown a picture of the statue of the pope in his portfolio, politely asked if Jojo was the one who made the wooden staff, thinking the whole time it was the real Pope.

Or that time when someone asked that the children should not be allowed to play near the statue, when, in fact, the ?children? were part of the whole artwork.

It is no wonder that religious communities compete to commission him to create the statues of their founders or their patron saints. Catholics don?t like to see their saints distorted.

Castrillo once commented that ?casting leaves a gap between the artist and his work. He ends up with little more than a copy of his model.?

For Jojo, however, if your models are universal figures of holiness like Our Lady of La Naval, Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Sin, it is the artist?s duty to present a perfect copy, not only to preserve the memory of his subject but also to invoke the messages they bring to the people.

Contradicting rules

The most salient aspect of Jojo?s style is not his perfect imitative powers, but in his uncanny ability to contradict rules of engineering and structural designs.

The Quezon City Engineer?s Office had repeatedly questioned the capacity of the rotating statue of Our Lady in the City to withstand strong winds. But typhoon ?Milenyo? proved them wrong. At the height of the typhoon, the Lady looked calm, and comforting. Definitely the structure did not collapse.

Barcena?s statue of the Redemption, which serves as focal point of the private cemetery of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Tagaytay City, continues to baffle engineers and architects alike since the image of the Risen Lord, in concrete, floats several feet above the ground supported only by an arc that appears like a waving white cloth.

Only 34 years old, Jojo started doing major work at the age of 12. He was still a Fine Arts student, major in Painting, at the University of Santo Tomas when Naga Archbishop Leonardo Legazpi, a former UST rector, asked him to make the replica of Our Lady of Peñafrancia.

The artist believes the commission was the turning point in his life. He says he continuously reflects on the fruits of his labor and questions his relevance as an artist, especially in the lives of ordinary people. He says he aspires to be ready for new discoveries as art and technology continue to evolve.

Barcena says he is confident God is leading him to a new form of artistic expression. And, yes, it will be a reflection of the three things he claims as his trademark: perfect casting; awesome structural design; and a visual narrative that can incite an interior revolution.