Born on June 24, 1900, the highly-revered Juan Culala Flores single-handedly did something for his town that he had never imagined. That is re-living the material culture of Betis which is woodcarving when he was still alive. Re-living means taking back the old glory of Betis as if it was Greece and making it “grand as Rome” through the empires of mandukit he had taught. Exaggerated as it maybe, Flores indeed made a local version of the Renaissance in Europe through his effort of imparting his magnificent skills to the Betis natives, thus elevating the life of the community sunk within the flood of poverty after the post war period.

Maestro Apung Juan Flores could have just stayed in his town and remained a fisherman just like his father. But making sculptures through mud which he gets from the riverbank along the Betis River in Sta.Ursula became his life-long passion. He never wanted to collect fishes from the water. He wanted to be different.

At 18, he went to Manila where he worked as an apprentice to notable sculptors like Maximo Vicente, Isabelo Tampingco and Eulogio Garcia. Through this apprenticeship and at the same time accepting projects on a commission basis, he honed his skills and developed his own style. But unlike others who usually forgot about their roots after earning a fortune, Flores decided to go back to his native barrio which is Sta.Ursula in Betis. And things were never the same again. He was like an aging salmon who got back to the spawning ground to assure the continuity of the breed by producing new offsprings. So he taught a lot of disipulo (apprentice) which he even helped in starting up with their own talyeris.

“Eman rugu megkaymut. Basta atin ya sang pera king bulsa, isaup at isaup ne. Eman pin mikwalta uling keng ugali nang ayta (He never got rich because of his generosity. As long as he has something to take from his pocket, he always give it to the needy),” stated 52-year old Ating Isabelle as she presents to me the citations and certificates her father got during his prolific years.

He may never got rich. But Juan Flores amassed a great wealth of recognition which Mr. Rolly Flores, one of his nephew believes as the ultimate legacy of his grandfather. In 1972, Maestro won the Grand Prize in the Richard Nixon’s Bust Sculpture-Making Competition which he presented to the President himself at Washington D.C., U.S.A. He was also the designer of the Mansion of the First Couple located in Batac, Ilocos Norte in 1974. A year after, together with some of his apprentices, he made the whole renovation of the Malacañang Palace of the President. His distinctive awards include the “Panday Pira Awardee for Pioneering Category” in 1977 and “Most Distinguished Son of Pampanga” in 1982.

Juan Flores might never existed for the young generation of today. To some, he might just be a legend. But unlike any other legends that were told, Maestro Apung Juan Flores was real.