Mutirão Agua Fria

This mutirão was not as amazing as the last one, but we had a chance to paint, hang out with some cool kids, and spend the day in a different community.


Sam painted the hands and some of the “stuff” coming out of the pointed finger. He also generally helped and fixed a lot of my part as well. See the completed image below.









I painted what has become my standard “pods and eyes” coming from the fist. The black is all spray paint! I finally put down the brush and emptied a can of black. Yeah! Now I just want more...

I have been drawing a lot of bird-like figures lately, but I haven’t tried to paint them on a wall yet. Sam made some new caps that should spray a finer line; we just have to figure out how to use them! I think I am going to start practicing using white on our wall. It will be easier to paint over when we leave.





This is the finished piece. A couple of people did the "futebol" goal and goalie in the middle.






My new idea is to try painting proverbs on the walls that work in English and Portuguese. I am thinking about starting with “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
We’ll see how that goes. I have been thinking about how to paint, “what the eyes don’t see the heart doesn’t feel.” Any ideas? I like the idea of giving people something to think about. Of course, that will depend on the execution.
I think we will miss the next mutirão so we will have to go paint on our own. There are tons of places to paint; it is just a matter of getting a crew together and doing it.

Check out some of the amazing Brazilian graffiti on Flickr. Almost all of it is Sao Paulo/Rio, but you can check out our page to see what is happening in Recife/Northeast Brazil. I think there are only 16 photos of Recife in the Flickr pool...no comment about that.
Graffiti Brasil Pool on Flickr
Our photo page (minus a lot of images of people)

I have been thinking a lot about showing images on the Internet. We took most of the pictures of people off our page and made them available to friends and family only. If you want an invitation let us know. Media has changed so quickly and there are many questions about who has the right to take and show pictures of other people. Before, you took a picture and showed your friends, stuck it in a photo album, etc. Now you take a picture and put it on the Internet for anyone to see and do whatever they want with. I have been thinking about how I use pictures from the Internet (class work, projects, etc.) and giving other people access to my image and images of people who did not make the decision to put their picture on the Internet (especially kids). Anyway, something I have been thinking about.



"If the parents leave, who will take care of the house?"
--Galo