Garbage Transformed

For some reason, my life here revolves around garbage quite a bit. Although I do do many, many, things other than visit garbage dumps and recycling depots, somehow these activities seem to have become a recurring theme in my activities of daily living. This week, however, offered a twist on the theme. Art from Garbage. We had a team of Canadian eco-designers here last week working with Brazilian artists and artesans trying to share value-added techniques to their work of transforming garbage into art.

One of the Brazilian artists participating in the workshop had the most amazing creations on display -- an army of Nordestino - or Northeastern - folk characters completely assembled from trash: shampoo and deodorant bottles; discarded razors and toothbrushes; tubes of toothpaste; water, pop and wine bottles; utensils; plastic medicine containers; margarine tubs; lightbulbs. In short, the works!

The characters pictures above are made a tube of toothpaste (the sax player), toothbrushes (the frevo dancers), and a shampoo bottle (the fruit vendor). The vendor's watermelons are made from the balls from roll-on deodorant! Clearly, creativity is not lacking. Scenes that I found particularly poignant were a catador (garbage picker) made from, well, garbage and a dentist and patient made from toothbrushes. A recent best-seller was a recreation of Brazil's national football team made out of deodorant bottles. Although he managed to sell hundreds of versions of the team, the artist admitted that Brazil's untimely elimination from the Cup was bad for sales....

For anyone who is heading to Olinda and wants to check out the atelier, it is located on the little street heading up to the Igreja do Amparo, just across from the Oficina do Sabor. A perfect outing to combine Olinda's creative food with its creative art!