"The most beautiful thing of all... is whatever you love best." Irene Vallejo (2022). Papyrus: the invention of books in the ancient world. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.
"The person figured here is not an autonomous, rational actor but an unfolding, shifting biography of culturally and materially specific experiences, relations, and possibilities inflected by each next encounter (...) in uniquely particular ways." (Lucy Suchman, Human-machine reconfigurations: plans and situated actions, 2009, 281)
May 3, 2024
Apr 28, 2024
creation at the core of art-I-fact
Apr 13, 2024
Apr 7, 2024
April
"When you tape into the arts to foster a meditative state, the places in your brain responsible for judgment and personal criticism are quieted in your prefrontal cortex, and you can assess a more generous, perspective-taking point of view." Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross (2023). Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us. Obra de Cruz-Filipe. Exposição Modo de Ver na Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Mar 30, 2024
sugar and oxygen
Mar 22, 2024
March
Mar 1, 2024
March
Feb 22, 2024
February
Feb 21, 2024
February
"Beauty is not only formal, and lies not only in the superficial qualities that are appealing to the eye or ear, it lies in patterns of meaning, in evocations of values, and its connection to the life the reader is living and the world she wants to see." Rebecca Solnit (2022). Orwell's Roses. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.
Feb 14, 2024
February
"We know that loving a person has agency and power - we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart." Robin Wall Kimerer (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Photo by Monica Pinheiro. Free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).
Feb 9, 2024
February
Jan 29, 2024
January
Jan 28, 2024
January
Dec 22, 2023
Dec 12, 2023
cooperation
Nov 25, 2023
unselfing
"Observing something beautiful" is "an occasion for unselfing" and it "may well hold the key to our collective survival. Because it means that our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives (...). It's to maximize (protect, regenerate) all life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives. (...) We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it." Naomi Klein (2023). Doppelganger. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).
Nov 12, 2023
Human rights
Nov 7, 2023
November
Oct 8, 2023
Less machines
Oct 2, 2023
October
"If we had 30 days to save the world, would we act before the 29th?" Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).
Sep 23, 2023
September
"For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty; like a butterfly it seeks colour and basks in warmth." Virginia Wolf (1930) in The Essays of Virginia Wolf: volume IX. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC)
Setembro
"Feeling the touch, discovering the colour, memorizing the smell. Weaving quietly different textures and tensions. Creating peace to guide action. Liberating the mind to shape possibilities." June 2021, What can we do with what we already have?...
Sep 10, 2023
September
Sep 9, 2023
September
Sep 8, 2023
September
Jul 31, 2023
July
Jul 30, 2023
July
Jul 19, 2023
July
Jul 18, 2023
July
Jul 17, 2023
July
Jul 2, 2023
nearness, seasonality and sustainability
navetes
Navete ou lançadeira. Portuguese words used for shuttle. "A shuttle is a tool designed to neatly and compactly store a holder that carries the thread of the weft yarn while weaving with a loom. Shuttles are thrown or passed back and forth through the shed, between the yarn threads of the warp in order to weave in the weft. The simplest shuttles, known as "stick shuttles", are made from a flat, narrow piece of wood with notches on the ends to hold the weft yarn" ( Wikipedia ).
In my tapestries I use repurposed ice cream sticks for the wool or cotton parts. For the plant parts it´s hands work, our best tool. Also in the photo, you can see two handmade wood needles, seldom used, but useful when needed more precision work.
Photo by Monica Pinheiro, free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).