Hello Sebastián!

I’m happy to be your partner in this beautiful project!

I am Brazilian and I live in Lisbon.

How about you?

Aqui e lá ( here and there)

Hello………

travel feet

Hi Dani!   Nice to be in touch with you.  Funny to see that you posted feet as I was planning to do that also!  We are already in sync……..and I am sure that this project will be interesting.

I am staying in Germany (Cologne) at the moment.  I am not sure what is next for me as I am rootless for the time being………

Hello Sebastian!

Our images are complementary: feet on the ground and feet in the water, floating …

I’m living in Lisbon, but next year I will go to France. I’m always roaming!

I still don’t  know where this project will take us … and I like it!

crualinha

hi………….

Hello Again Dani…..

I am currently without a ‘real’ home (happily rootless until I know what is next).  For the past two years I have been in India, Nepal, Thailand, Holland, Germany and England.  Seeing the world is more important right now than having a fixed place in the world and I am even beginning to think that ‘home’ is a feeling we carry inside of us and not a place.  A lot of things are changing for me at the moment, sort of a quiet period of reflection………

(to be continued)

Hi Sebastián!

I can imagine you like Marco Polo! I am very curious about your experience around the world…

How these travel influenced your work?

The roots sprout in me that I make no effort! They just born! And then I take care of them, because I need to grow… And I know that one day  I can change my place…

Beijos!

Lisboa-Köln

IMG_0084

…….

Hi…

I grew up all over the world (Germany, Holland, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, UK), so I suppose that this has an inevitable part in my work.  But I did test [travel + work] two years ago, when I made a collection while I was in Thailand, Nepal and India.  The concept was simple:  All work had to be made there and had to use the materials from the place.  The piece on the photo is called ‘The Forgotten Land’ and is made from materials that I found on the beach, Burmese sapphires and seeds.

forgotten land

The most challenging thing while working abroad like this was that the materials I used disappeared into the gaps between the floor boards of my hippy bungalow and I would have to climb underneath to retrieve them.  While in Nepal my fingers were frozen while I worked because the place didn’t have heaters………..

…..how about you?

Olá, Sebastián!

I like this piece, it makes me think of a pré-historical animal, like a trilobite. A trace of time.

As for myself…from a certain point in my life I felt the need not to lose my way back home. Like Hansel and Gretel, or like Ariadne. But I also felt the need to find my north, to draw future paths. That is why I’m interested in maps, frontiers, constellations, construction and deconstruction. 3a

4a

This work (Follow me)  is part of that search: a map of the city where I live with the places where I’ve been and where I’m going.

[maps]

………. H E L L O ………..

I recently bought a globe of the world, one that lights up.  I am sure that at some point I will use it as a bedside lamp.  Right now, though, it feels more like I have the world in my temporary home, which I can spin and let my finger point at a random destination.  Now that I think about it, I have always loved maps of the whole world.  Looking at them puts everything in perspective somehow and ties all the scattered fragments together in harmonious union (to bring chaos to order on one neat piece of paper!).  The feeling also reminds me of being at airports, where the whole world becomes much smaller and the people (even if they are stressed) come together from every corner.  It gives me a real feeling of unity and one-ness.

world………

meeting point

IMG_0106

I took this picture yesterday to send it to you !

It’s nice to put the world  into our home and then take our house and bring it anywhere…

I see in your jewelry this harmonious union that you mentioned.

constelacaodealexis

I sometimes wonder how our planet is small, as a small island in the middle of the universe. So I stare at the sky to get the feeling that there is more space around me…The Earth is just a meeting point.

( )

S P A C E

Hi…..

Did you take that picture before I posted the globe photo?  After reading your text, I couldn’t help but think of this book I recently read.  I love outer space and the mystery that surrounds it all: the possibility of other life, other worlds, the great unknown.  Yet the book (below is in excerpt from it) says that we hold this unknown vastness also within our own bodies.

Physicists have discovered that the apparent solidity of matter is an illusion created by our senses. This includes the physical body, which we perceive and think of as form, but 99.99 % of which is actually empty space. This is how vast the space is between the atoms compared to their size, and there is as much space again within each atom. The physical body is no more than a misperception of who you are. In many ways, it is a microcosmic version of outer space. To give you an idea of how vast the space is between celestial bodies, consider this: Light traveling at a constant speed of 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second takes just over one second to travel between the earth and the moon; light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach the earth. Light from our nearest neighbor in space, a star called Proxima Centauri, which is the sun that is closest to our own sun, travels for 4. 5 years before it reaches the earth. This is how vast the space is that surrounds us. And then there is the intergalactic space, whose vastness defies all comprehension. Light from the galaxy closest to our own, the Andromeda Galaxy, takes 2.4 million years to reach us. Isn’t it amazing that your body is just as spacious as the universe?’

gal

scales…

Yes, Sebastián, I took that picture before you posted the globe photo!…We are on the same wavelength!

After our “conversation” in this blog I went to the planetarium…A very good trip!

“The truth is that the space is not more out of us than in us, and it does not belong to a privileged group of sensations.”                                                                                                                                                 (Henri Bergson in Matter and Memory)

colagem62

“Give me your hand:

I will now tell you how I went into the expressionless, that always has been my blind search and secret, how I got what exists between the number one and number two, how I saw the line of fire and mystery, which is the surreptitious line. Between two musical notes is a note, between two facts is a fact, between two grains of sand together, for more than that there are, is a range of space, there is a feeling that is felt between – in the interstices of primordial matter is the line of mystery and fire, which is the breath of the world, and continued respiration of the world.That is what we hear and call silence.

Clarice Lispector, in The Passion According to GH

] B a c k [

Hi Again……

I needed a week of not posting to bring myself back in alignment.  I really enjoyed the image of the fetus and the planet.  Did you make it?  Even though I am not a fetus myself, I feel like I am going through an incubation period right now.  I sort of feel like I am hiding in a (very large and modern) nest, focusing on being and allowing things to happen without me trying to break, I mean, open doors with a crowbar.  My journey through jewellery has very much felt like breaking one door open after another (because they wouldn’t open themselves), only to find that there was nothing of interest and value to be found on the other side, just another door with a promising golden smile of illusion.  So while some doors need or ask to be opened, others perhaps need to remain shut.  I also believe that sometimes we encounter doors closing while others open by themselves to guide us along along our path though life…..

Here is a photo of my favourite door(way) in Varanasi, India.

door

So have you thought at all about what we could work on together?  I haven’t really yet, but I have to say that after reading the word ‘mirror’ at the end of your door post, something sparked in my mind.  I was planning to make a collection about mirrors, reflection, time, illusion, reality, unreality, birds, crystals and a twist on the concept of Alice in Wonderland, but something in me hasn’t wanted to work at all.  Yet now I see that we definitley have thoughts, ideas and things in common, in sync.  Maybe something to work with??????

This is an image of Giuseppe Penone wearing mirror contact lenses.  He cannot see, but the world can see itself reflected in his eyes.

penone

Olá!

Hello Sebastian!
I’m so glad to get you back here with a beautiful open door. I’m getting in. I already entered and I feel good.

In fact I think we have many ideas in common and I’m enjoying a lot our meeting. Our waves are really tuned … This is so rare! After all we know little of each other and this is of no importance because our thoughts are knowing.
I have a great feeling to be already at work with you. I have thought about how to implement our ideas.

For now all the photos that I sent are mine. The foetus is, in fact, an appropriation of a famous photo of Lennart Nillson (1973). It is part of a serie where I appropriate an already existing pictures. I put the planets and rocket paper on it and then I re-photographed. It is a personal view of the universe, as if I were watching the world as if I were a human satellite.

I haven’t spoken of mirror randomly. There is a material that I don’t  like for its arrogant coldness (though I like its fragility), but I love the concept precisely because everything you mentioned: reflection, time, illusion, reality, unreality. Alice in Wonderland has always been a reference for me and this photograph of Penone always impressed me!

I like the idea of working on top of these issues, which are common ground for both of us. Each of us makes his own experiences. Once we have something (it can be everything: design, model, collage, materials  that inspire us, or even a jewel) we can show it and go on with our dialogue. Then we think together about how these early ideas can evolve. What do you think of this?
My great pleasure with jewelry is all the creative and experimental process. I’m slow to material achievements. Thought is faster …
abraço
Dani

IMG_0442

Mirror Mirror On The Floor……

Hola Dani!

Now you definitely confirmed my personal feelings of us being in sync on a lot of things, which is good.  I agree with your words about the mirror: cold, harsh, shiny, full of vanity and narcissism, yet also fragile (glass), that can esily cut you when it is broken.  The words ‘dangerous’ and ‘beauty’ come to mind somehow, enbaling us, or tricking us, to get trapped by our own reflection, the danger being, like Narcissus, that we can drown in our own image, or illusion.  I look at mirrors, especially broken mirrors, and see cracks in the surface of reality, small pockets that have opened up (the separation between two supposed worlds or realities).  What do you think?

………..more later

mirror

DSC_0925Hello, Sebastián!

I need to think about all  this…

The mirror gives the reality of an inverted image and symbolizes the reciprocity of consciences …

……..

be back soon … need to reflect

I is another.

DSCN0795

Oi Sebastián!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the mirror means to me. I came to a ( near) conclusion that, ultimately, what I like in the mirror is that it can reflect another one in me and I can complete this other one with an other part of me. It’s a mix of  identities and a permanent change.

“I is another,” as Rimbaud would say.

DSCN0392

Actualizado recentemente

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

This picture below makes reference to the picture you sent.

I liked very much these fluid mirrors on the floor.
DSCN0313

For me, the integration / adaptation is much like this picture.
um abraço!

Reflecting on Reflection……

Hi Dani.

Nice photos and thoughts.  I like your comment on what the mirror means to you:  Mix of identities and permanent change.  What is funny is that our mood also affects what we see in ourselves when we look into a mirror, in the same way that our moods (emotions) affect how we see everything else; always changing.  I am reflecting now.

Lately I have been learning about the ego and how it exists within us, distorting our views and whispering endless thoughts and comments in our minds (judging, labeling, weighing, wanting, needing, evaluating, hating, loving, etc).  The moods within us change constantly because our egos constantly change their minds.  I am also conducting an experiment with myself at the moment called ‘Living in The Now’, in other words being where I am and not thinking or being in the thoughts in my head.  Interesting so far.  I have no real expectations here.

The mirror (now that I reflected) is needed primarily by the ego.  I am not sure why I wrote this.  I am not even sure if it true or false, but somehow it makes sense to me.  Or perhaps I ought to rephrase the sentence above:  The mirror, depending on how much it is used, is needed primarily by the ego.  I like mirrors because they represent light and illusion to me.  I am continuously drawn into this illusion, it tricks me into believing it.  I also think that mirrors separate two worlds, that of being and that of doing.  I am the life that animates me, not that which I see reflected in a mirror (but that is who I think I am – the physical form).  The mirror then is a gateway into the illusion or into the truth!

My work has always revolved around themes such as the escape from reality, energy within objects, absurdity, nonsense, etc.  The mirror seems to encapsulate all of these themes somehow………….

Orphée…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCYcWpMDWLQ

to Sebastián

IMG_0354