J. Borges: Woodcut Print Artist from Bezerros, Pernambuco |
At kilometer 106 on the Luiz Gonzaga Highway (BR 232) stands a whitewashed building called the “Casa de Cultura Serra Negra.” Dank and cluttered inside, with its roadside location, it is reminiscent of an auto mechanics shop. For decades it served as Borges’ atelier and now houses children, nephews and cousins who followed him into the chapbook business. Borges has found new digs. Roomier and with better lighting, it still could pass for a simple country home. Visitors can purchase chapbooks, prints and original woodblock molds by a multi-talented artist whose work has been featured in exhibitions at places like Zurich’s Helmhaus Museum. Scholars point to Borges’ work to help explain why Brazil maintains a vibrant woodblock print tradition. Visitors to the workshop can get a glimpse of a vintage mechanical printing machine and, if they’re lucky, see the artist at work carving his next mold.
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Lajedo do Pai Mateus: Join Film Crews in the Backlands of Paraíba |
The Cariri region’s awe-inspiring landscape, strewn with granite boulders, is compared to Australia’s Devils Marbles, Namibia’s Erongo Mountains and Algeria’s Hoggar Mountains. It culminates in the Lajedo do Pai Mateus, an upside-down bowl topped by a rock called “the helmet.” Cariri is also home to some of Brazil’s most important archeological artifacts. One can almost imagine the legendary bandits of the Brazilian northeast roaming these ranges – as they have many times on the big screen. Indeed the area has become increasingly popular with film location scouts.
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Visit Fortaleza with TV Reporter Stephanie Eilert |
Fortaleza native and television reporter Stephanie Eilert offers visitors some tips about her hometown, the coastal capital of Ceará state.
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Recife: Revenge of the Sharks |
Environmental degradation has transformed a once fashionable beach in Northeastern Brazil into a magnet for sharks
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Recife: Rivers Run Through It |
Recife stands where the Capibaribe meets the Beberibe River just in time for the two to flow hand-in-hand into the sea. The historic center is literally an island unto itself - one of three that comprise the downtown area. Some 39 bridges crisscross a city that has been referred to as a tropical Venice. When I discovered that Recite offered its version of the riverboat rides I’d taken along the Seine in Paris and the Thames in London, I jumped at the chance to take the night tour, thus transforming Recite into my own City of Lights for an evening.
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Recife’s Erotic Pagan Temple |
Tourists swarm Rio de Janeiro’s iconic hilltop Christ statue and Manaus’ magnificent opera house. By contrast Recife’s big “can’t miss” attraction is often, well, missed by visitors to the state capital of Pernambuco. For those who catch a cab for the 15 kilometer ride to the Várzea district on the outskirts of town, the Oficina Brennand provides a new meaning for the term living museum. Like sex and death, Francisco Brennand’s sometimes monstrous ceramic sculptures, always pregnant with life, both attract and repel – but never fail to fascinate.
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| João Primo: São Luís do Maranhão (1998) |
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