Plastic Bottle Art

2008 was ushered in with some inspired use of plastic bottles (which they call 'pet-chee' for the PET label), including some cheerful tree flowers found here randomly on the street in POA...

...and some intricate and impressive chandeliers all made from plastic bottles in the famous (at least locally) Natal Luz (Christmas light) celebration in the nearby bizarrely Bavarian tourist town of Gramado:

(the same chandelier while zooming...)

Here's the street scene so you can visualize the whole shabang...

...and two leftover Natal decorations at a psychiatric hospital my mom
has been visiting as part of a film project here...

SO...REDUCE. REUSE. RECYCLE.
AND WHY NOT MAKE SOME ART WHILE YOU'RE AT IT?

Livros do Artistas / Artists' Books

One month after our post on the POA art scene, Mama exhibits her own work in the Bienal B. Through a course on Artists' Books at Subterrânea Atelier, a nifty little gallery nearby, she created this object (above) that she later learned is called an 'altered book.' Altered may be too gentle of a word to describe the way she hacked away at it with an exacto-knife, not to mention drilling, carving, sewing, photocopying onto transparencies, and inserting a lightbulb, but it is certainly accurate.

The books she mauled were Portuguese translations of two Jules Verne books, The Castle of the Carpathians and Village in the Treetops, the latter title aptly describing our little life here above the park. Appropriate for the piece's themes of buoyancy, travel, and motion, when she calculated which pages would be the center of the book, one was the chapter entitled, "Os Dois Viajantes" (The Two Travelers [though I have plans to scratch out "Dois" and add "Tres"]) and the other was "Viagem Fluvial" (River Journey).

Many of the books on display (see below) were journals and diaries of artists, and others, like Mamas, were riffs on the concept of a book, created specifically for exhibition.


The books created during the class were on exhibit for the last week of the show. A collective decision was made to suspend Mama's creation from the ceiling (you can see it glowing in the corner in the photo below).


I enjoyed visiting the gallery, and had time for a little artistic release of my own.


After she started the project, Mama discovered a whole world on-line of altered books and their creators. Here are two amazing book artists you should check out: Brian Dettmer's book 'autopsies' and Su Blackwell's exquisite creations.

Happy reading, slicing, dicing, or however it is that you want to dig into your book today.

Noa on the POA Art Scene

I have been scoping out the art scene and have been impressed with the variety and quality of the exhibitions here. First, Mama and I went to the Bienal do Mercosul with some other friendly foreigners from Israel, Germany and Denmark. I stopped to examine a few pieces very closely (see left), but otherwise ran around like a chicken without a head. Mama caught a few glimpses of the artwork despite my breakneck speed toward dangerous ledges and my attempts to leap towards the torrential rains outside.

We naturally ended the tour in the gift shop, where I examined the merchandise (at right), including a custom-made flip-flop with the Bienal logo. Only in Brazil.

Since POA is the home of many anti-establishment activities (such as the World Social Forum), there is also, of course, the alt-counterpart to the mainstream art world: Bienal B. True to anarchist form, the BB takes place in sites all over town; to wit, here are two artists (at right) living in a cage in one of POA's fancier malls in a piece entitled "Home Sweet Home."

All three of us went to NO AR at a groovy exhibition space, known as the Usina do Gasometro. Celebrating 50 years of post-war media and technology, there were lots of interactive, multimedia gizmos and one massive screen (about 4 regular movie screens wide) with an impressive montage of footage interacting with footage. Here's a YouTube video I found of the exhibition (it doesn't show the large video projection, sadly).

After seeing all of these stimulating exhibitions, I needed some artistic release of my own. Here's my latest masterpiece.


P.S. If you want to dig deeper into issues that come up when you mix kids and art, check out this movie by our dear friend, Amir: My Kid Could Paint That, opening any day now in NY, LA, DC, SF, Boston, Dallas and elsewhere.

The Gaúcho experiences Photoshop