Steve Jobs meets St. Peter

This ilustration is beautiful:

I was featured in this book

I like how my paintings look in a book.

Barroca do Zêzere

Last Saturday I went for a walk along the river Zêzere, passing near some big mines where they extract mostly wolframite. Big heaps:





Some chemical reactions in the stones form this beautifull paterns. This is unintended landscape art. Click to enlarge:





Near Barroca do Zêzere we went to see this petroglyphs. Notice the head, neck and front leg of an horse on top, and another head bellow. The hand is pointig to the head of the first horse:





Ten thousand years and one day later, the following Sunday, the portuguese street artist VHILS and his crew started carving this face in a wall, in Covilhã. (I´ll post more photos soon):

Algarve Gin Tonic

Now, witness the birth of a classic!
You saw it first here!
A couple of years ago portuguese authorities launched a campain to promote Algarve as a tourist destination for english speaking folks, they anglicizing the name of the province to "Allgarve".
To name this variation of gin tonic I invented, I also decided to anglicize a name of a town in Algarve, called Almancil.
So, this Gin Tonic is called ALLMENSILLY !!!!
It´s a simple recipy. You just add carob flour to your usual gin tonic, and it tastes delicious!
The ingredients:



Mix a small spoon of carob flour with ice.

Add gin and stir.

Add the tonic.

You should try this at home.

A walk down art gallery lane, in Porto

In Porto I found this new art gallery, anémona, showing this beautiful pieces by the young brasilian artist Marta Emília. She glues small pieces of painted paper to get this intricate, some organic and some geometric, paterns. The titles of the collages come from the lyrics of brasilian songs.









I particularly like this one titled "Brocal Dourado". It is detailed like an embroidery or a lace and it also reminds me of those colorfull underwater scenes from the coral reefs. Excelent.





In Galeria Presença, I saw this amazing sculptures by Pedro Valdez Cardoso. I like the clash between tribal art and the luxury fabrics (and not so luxury stuff like dusters and pins):











In the same gallery there was this piece by Alexandre Farto:

Works made by João Leonardo with cigarette butts he collected during a stay in Germany, from April 2010 to May 2011:






Some street art:

Mutant boots

I just invented these. Click to enlarge:

Death is the turn on the road

Death is the turn on the road
Death is just not being seen.

Fernando Pessoa

Recently, within a couple of days, fate or some spirit diligently working to organize for me the zigliotrilionmegabites of information out there, presented me with two coinciding references to death. First, while surfing the net, I learned about this movie on one of my favourite movie directors: Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, by Dmitry Trakovsky.
Excerpts from reviews:

"The young filmmaker Dmitry Trakovsky sets out in search of his favorite director's legacy.He attempts to come closer to the meaning of one of Tarkovsky's most enigmatic beliefs... that death doesn't exist. What he sets out to achieve is to find out the ways in which Tarkovsky is still alive, and that's why the movie's single act of formal daring may be its beautiful, if misleading title. Instead of "searching" or "remembering" Tarkovsky, this new documentary hints boldly at his persistent, real, and this-wordly presence. The latter may manifest itself in memories others have of Tarkovsky, but it also finds a material dimension in his son Andrei Andreevich. Finally, and most poignantly, the filmmaker points to numerous people whose life choices were forever altered by encountering Tarkovsky's films. As we're watching the serious, unsmiling and yet serene face of a young Orthodox monk, as he's declaring Tarkovsky's work as the single most decisive factor in his choice of becoming a man of cloth, it's hard not to think of Tarkovsky as still living through the existence of this man."

Soon after I read this article by Larissa MacFarquhar in the Sept.5, 2011 issue of "The New Yorker" about Derek Parfit,

"...thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the English-speaking world. He has written two books, both of which have been called the most important works written in the field in more than a century. Parfit´s first book, "Reasons and Persons"...was dense with science-fictional thought experiments, all urging a shift toward a more impersonal, non-physical, and selfless view of human life. When, in the process of a zygote´s cellular self-multiplication, does a person start to exist? Or when does a person, descending into dementia or coma, cease to be? There is no simple answer - it is a matter of degree.
Parfit´s view resembles in some ways the Buddhist view of the self, a fact that was pointed out to him years ago by a professor of Oriental religions. Parfit was delighted by this discovery. Sometime later he learned that "Reasons and persons" was being memorized and chanted, along with sutras, by novice monks at a monastery in Tibet.
It seems to a friend of Parfit´s that his theory of personal identity is motivated by an extreme fear of death. But Prfit doesn´t believe that he once feared death more than any other people, and now he thinks he fears it less.

My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations.

Some people will remember him. Others may be influenced by his writing, or act upon his advice. Memories that connect with his memories, thoughts that connect with his thoughts, actions taken that connect with his intentions, will persist after he is gone, just inside diferent bodies.

This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.

Paul Bakker´s wooden sculptures

Just in the mail today, all the way from Cairns, Australia.
Muito obrigado, senhor Paulo!

A Poem

How to put in words the song of birds,
How to define the taste of wine?
I tried to write down what I feel for you,
Ended up with a poem that looks like poo.

The little plastic bottle takes a nap in its own cradle

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Two carrots in love

They were born and grew up together and made a vow to die together in a pot of soup... (Spring 2011-Summer 2011)

And love lies bleeding in my hand:

Thoughts of the day

A scarecrow with a crow sitting on top is the perfect metaphor for the failed work of art.
Alzheimer must feel like a constant flow of jamais vu.