Save for the abstract works on paper and some minimalist paintings hanging on the walls of Noëll El Farol’s quaint home in Novaliches, there are no obvious signs pointing that El Farol is a visual artist, at least to an uninitiated viewer that is. Instead, one would probably think that he’s just another esteemed member of the academe obsessed with thick and large books—his are arranged in a high stack in his living room—about unromantic subjects (for some) such as history, culture, heritage, and archaeology. But really, El Farol is a formidable man of both science and the arts. And one would be stunned that this unconventional and rare combination works for him in more ways than one.

Known for creating thought-provoking, elegant, and novel sculptural pieces made of glass, El Farol uses a calculated and scientific approach in his art-making process. This, he does by thinking like a forensic investigator who is always on the lookout for clues and an archaeologist who cannot wait to reveal and to determine traces of a community’s past.

Thus, whereas other artists create pieces to emancipate their innermost thoughts and idiosyncrasies, El Farol produces works to make public Asian pre-historic cultures and their “historical, social, psychological, and mystical associations” to modern times.

His pieces, oscillating from big to small, include actual bones cast in glass; modern sundials made from granite, marble, cast cement, and metal; glass dream boxes that house specimens and elements; a recreation of a historical site and fragments of human settlement fashioned in glass, wood, ceramic and saw dust; bugs rendered in pigment and seemingly fossilized between cold-bonded glass; a large-scale sculpture inspired by the legendary Venus of Willendorf, a “sculpture-installation of flat lenses with engraved delicate natural elements; and Petri dishes that store and put on view images of biological or scientific remains.”

His latest project involves collecting fingerprints from people, from his friends to acquaintances, and making them visible through the use of a powder used by forensic experts. Neatly lined up in a box, the imprinted glass slides when viewed look like abstract etchings on glass.

Collectively, if all his works were to be set in a space, El Farol’s pieces would rival those of genuine artifacts and specimens in a museum. In fact, an onlooker might mistake them for the real thing. All are intricately made and backed up with theories and research. Seeing them would immediately spark a healthy discourse between the artist and the viewer.

However, the artist does not contend himself with just showing off how skillful and commanding his hands are in manipulating his foremost medium. He goes beyond achieving opuses similar to original cultural objects unearthed in actual excavations and sites. Instead, El Farol takes impetus from such objects and appropriates and contemporizes them. And that’s where his being an artist comes in. He adds exciting and modern twists in his oeuvre, imploring the elusive quality of these objects and exploring the metaphors they suggest.

More than a commendable technique of amalgamating cold work (cutting, engraving, polishing, and painting), hot work (melting and blowing), and kiln work, and addressing archaeological and anthropological concerns, El Farol attempts to provide a dreamlike continuum to his audiences. His artworks bridge the gap between past and present and between reality and fantasy.

“The glass sculptures stimulate the exploration of the way dream thoughts enter consciousness with the way the mind sometimes seizes upon fleeting intuitions and turns them into forms…they are instances of the mind’s capacity to transform intangibility itself and to turn elusive, impalpable ideas into static configurations,” El Farol explains.

El Farol muses that his obsession with the historical past started when he scoured his father’s leather-bound baul and found in it a catalogue of a Manunggul Jar. The artist says that he was shocked with the secondary burial jar’s eccentric form, noting its anthropomorphic feature. From that point onwards, the young El Farol began painting borrowed images from the past—the iconography of the Egyptians and their peculiar worship to icons and events from the pre-colonial era in the Philippines to mention a few.

The artist says that it was natural for him to prefer the three-dimensional. “Parang papunta na ‘yung mga una kong trabaho sa ganun eh. Kahit na mixed media sila, hindi sila flat. They were relief-like,” tells El Farol. “Dumaan ako sa proseso. After my residency in Japan, I came out with volumetric and wall-bound sculptural works already.”

El Farol’s educational background from the School of Shizuoka University in Japan proved helpful in his aesthetic and in his approach to art-making. There he was blatantly exposed to the art of utilizing glass as medium. “Nakita ko ‘yung mga trabaho ni René Lalique (a French glass artist celebrated for his creations of perfume bottles, vases, jewelry pieces, and chandeliers), ‘yung art deco pieces niya na kuhang-kuha ‘yung mga detalye,” he shares.

“I saw how intriguing glass was. Nakita ko rin kasi kung gaano ka-unusual ‘yung manner ng development ng isang form using glass. Hindi siya madali eh kasi para kang chemist na tutunawin mo ‘yung glass and all. When you’re working with such kind of medium, you also get surprising effects in your piece,” he adds.

But El Farol already saw the many possibilities of his chosen medium during his college days at the Philippine Women’s University, back when he was inclined in printmaking. “Ang concept ko noon is to engrave an image in glass and print that image,” he remembers.

Asked of the rewards he gets from making art, he reveals, “When you put up your works for an exhibition, the rewarding part is when people get to see your works. Para sa akin, hindi lang rewarding ‘yung you are able to express yourself. When you open the ideas to the public and you get to know their response, malaking bagay na ‘yun. It’s rewarding for me that I am either able to provoke the viewers or to let them understand my works. At the end of the day, I can say that I also contribute to the development of art-making in the country. Nakapaglilikha rin ako ng appreciation sa kultura.”

Through the years, El Farol has without fail elucidated his artistic vision and scientific pursuits through his well-thought of pieces. El Farol’s efforts are a testament that a merger of the romantic and the scientific, of art and archaeology can be possible. His works are a potent reminder that one can discover human traces, marks, and remembrance through an artwork. His oeuvre continues to challenge artists and art enthusiasts to be more observant and curious and to see that art, really, encompasses everything.

Now who says science can’t be art?