Sculptor specialises in big Buddhas

Few pilgrims are aware that the man who sculpted the giant statue of the Buddha of Happiness on top of Cam Mountain in the southern province of An Giang is the sculptor of many similar, but smaller, figures in pagodas across the country.
For the Cam Mountain sculpture, Thuy Lam and his workers spent more than three years making the concrete Buddha. At 33.6m, it’s Viet Nam’s tallest religious structure and is considered among the tallest in Southeast Asia.
More than 2 million people have visited the statue each year since it was erected in 2007.
"Doing this on top of a mountain was hard. Bringing the building materials to the top takes time," Chau Viet Thanh, one of Lam’s colleagues, said. "Wind, rain, heat and cold also hindered our work."
Lam also sculpted the 25m-high statue of Phat Thich Ca Mau Ni (Sakyamuni Buddha) at the Van Hanh Zen Buddhist Institute in Da Lat, as well as a 22.36m-high Buddha statue in the front yard of Vinh Trang Pagoda in My Tho City, Tien Giang Province.
Lam and his colleagues are currently putting the final touches to a 65m-high statue of Phat Ba Quan Am, Goddess of Mercy, at Linh Ung 3 Pagoda on Son Tra Mountain in Da Nang.
Lam made the statue at request of Da Nang authorities who expect it to be a tourist attraction.
Lam, whose real name is Pham Dan Chu, is a native of An Giang. He lives in HCM City and travels frequently from province to province working on sculptures at pagodas. Besides dozens of giant statues, Lam has made hundreds of small-sized Buddha statues for many pagodas located from the central province of Thua Thien-Hue to southern provinces.
He is a self-taught sculptor. "My first job as a sculptor was to repair a mermaid statue at a hotel in HCM City in the 1980s," the 65-year-old said.
"I have a passion for shaping figures and modelling clay since childhood, "Lam said. "I also spent lots of time studying Oriental philosophy and Buddha’s teachings."
Before making statues for pagodas, Lam painted hundreds of portraits of Buddha and carved many Buddha statues.
"I’m old now and I’ve thought of rest," Lam said, but he has yet to retire.
"Monks and my friends call me. They tell me there are new pagodas here and there in need of statues. When I start on a new statue, I work with all my enthusiasm and I forget that I have thought of taking a rest," he said.