A Surprising Artist

We went into town yesterday and checked out the national art museum we first visited on our city tour.

We got there on the last day of the exhibit and I’m glad we made it. We both saw a bit of Key West here which was quite surprising.

This is the Oscar Niemeyer dome wherein is housed the museum which we first visited on our city tour. Upstairs in the mezzanine there were the woodcuts on display of a rural Brazilian artist. 

It’s not exactly the same but it put us in mind of the artwork of Mario Sanchez in Key West.

Layne mentioned it to me as well so I figured the comparison made sense. 

Like Sanchez, Jose Francisco Borges was born into a working family and did the kind of day labor jobs that did not look like anything artistic was locked away inside him. 

The museum had a biography only in Portuguese which I can read more or less and it said he fathered 16 children and adopted several more for a total of 23 which apparently put pressure on his artistic output. Interestingly he lived a good long life and stayed in his rural small town where he died. 

There wasn’t any explanation of the woodcuts other than brief titles so if they tell stories like the Mario Sanchez artwork I wouldn’t know but I did notice in the collection above one looked unused with no ink on its face. 

I leaned over the white line holding my wide angled lens but I am a rule follower unlike some of my Brazilian neighbors who at least did not actually touch the artwork. The security guard said nothing. 

And of course this exhibit was in the mezzanine of the dome shaped building.

It hangs from the ceiling and I know I’ve posted it here previously but the mezzanine is pretty cool. 

It features the architect Niemeyer’s love of compound curves. 

Then we went to the basement, more curves,

To check out an exhibit of modern Italian art. It’s a mobile exhibit first shown in Milan in 2023. 

And wasn’t I surprised to find a huge mural from my neck of the woods in Umbria. 

It’s called Vallefredda a CB locality near Terni in Italy apparently used as a backdrop for spaghetti westerns hence the cacti in the picture which are not native to Umbria. Next time I go back to visit my sisters I’ll drive by to see if I can find the old man sitting reflecting on his life: 

Out into the sunshine. 

And in the distance you can see the tents across the plaza where we went to buy dinner. 

The plan was to get some skewers to take home. 

In Portuguese “pasteles” are empanadas whereas in Spanish that word means sweet cakes. Just to remind you how confusing similar languages can be. 

For some reason we settled on this vendor who it turned out was Jose a refugee from Venezuela. A Spanish speaker! Praise be. 

He’s lived in Brasilia, in a suburb an hour away actually, for the past three years. His cousin lives in Michigan in an auto assembly plant and he’s been thinking of giving it a try.

I endeavored to dissuade him but the lure of America still burns bright. Then he asked if I thought an invasion of Venezuela was imminent like I have a clue. After weeks of not being able to speak to the locals I got thrown in at the deep end. 

Time to call an Uber. The Christmas fair across the street is open all week. 

Traffic control at the pedestrian crossing. 

Brasilia, fun and peaceful and a good place to be for New Year’s.

Part The First Done

We met with Denir the mechanic yesterday and got some good news.

Yesterday started with other plans, a museum visit and a grocery shop until we got a text from Denir. Thanks to Google Translate his WhatsApp message told us the mechanical work on GANNET2 was done and he was in his shop until noon. We called Uber. 

Denir charged us US$565 for his labor, installing our brand new $700 alternator while adapting these plate to protect it. He also gave us an alignment, an engine oil change and a replacement windshield. All of which was needed after our thousand mile detour on terrible roads to the Guyanas.

Interestingly Denir located a small leak from a radiator hose while he was installing our new second alternator and he fixed that. I had noticed a slight drop in radiator fluid but I was wondering if it was evaporation from the heat. Apparently not but he saw it and fixed it. Our new windshield looks great after driving since about September with an irritating crack across the passenger’s view.  The thing about the Promaster is that it shares chassis components with the wildly popular Fiat Ducato sold around the world. That means getting chassis parts for the Promaster is usually very easy and not excessively expensive. 

So now GANNET2 is good to go; however she spends the weekend in Denir’s huge shop…

…so Monday morning Alessandro our Christmas host will come over and drive our home to his shop 50 yards up the street so he can start installing our new electrical parts.

The center piece for the roof will first be our new Dometic 12 volt air conditioner. Then Alessandro will measure the remaining space to add our Starlink receiver which we have at last decided to install on the roof. The idea is to be able to turn it on at the flick of a switch and even use it while driving.

The disadvantage is it won’t be portable if we want superior internet on an apartment when we rent, or our signal may be weak if we park under trees. Overall it will be useful move in South America. After all that we will know how much space is left for new more powerful solar panels.

After that we are converting our fridge to 12 volts, adding a sink drain jug so we don’t put gray water directly on the ground. We used to have a large underbody tank to collection water but we took it out as it hung too low. Alessandro is figuring he should be finished by 20th January.  We have leased our apartment till 23rd and our permit to stay in Brazil expires February 8th. By then we hope to be in Paraguay. Here’s hoping…

A headless pigeon in our apartment complex. 

We have loud busy green parakeets in the tree outside our 3rd floor apartment. They aren’t easy to spot.