Visionary Artists

By now, we have been in Baltimore for 4 weeks, with 2 more to go.

The city is really nice but there is a site that just took my breath away.is more than nice, it is just fantastic. The American Museum of Visionary Art (http://www.avam.org)/ is dedicated to show the art of self-taught artists in many different media, and the building is already a work of art.

The pieces are created in all kinds of media and show how much creativity is out there. All so whimsical, so inspiring, so moving... Enjoy the pictures and if you have a chance, don't miss it.

Surprised? Me???

I always thought my last blog would be about the launching of my website, http://SilkArtFromBrazil.com which, by the way, has been quietly launched.
I should also blog about my new jewelry collection, my incursions at SEO (search engine optimization) and, at a more personal level, about the forced 6 weeks vacation Frank and I are taking in Maryland.
I will blog about all of this but not today. Today, I am talking about the gift I have just received from my incredible husband: a Kindle (you know, the ebook reader from Amazon).
You know me; I am an avid reader and had I been living in the US, I would have bought a Kindle a long time ago.
Well, Frank got me one and it arrived today; a total surprise.
I am still getting acquainted with it but I can already say: LOVE IT!!!
I will be letting you know more as I use it but, if I don't blog much, you will know why. So many books, so little time...

Back to the old days

I have been very busy in the last few days building my own website.

The reason I decided to do this was Google. For me, it is very important that when people search something like “hand painted scarf”, my little etsy store shows up in the first few Google pages.

Well, my etsy shop doesn’t show in the first, middle, or last pages… doesn’t show at all!!! My “page rank” is….. zip. You know when Google says something like “other pages are not shown to avoid duplicates”? Well, that’s where I am.

So, I decided that with my own webpage, I could try to change things. Using weird stuff they call meta tags and what not, I am aiming to show up in Google. Let’s see…

Funny thing is I am enjoying the process a lot. Even though I am using a “user friendly tool”, I am doing some HTML (?!?) I feel I am back being a computer programmer (ahhh, my 20s), and it’s fun!!!

You can see the shot of my homepage above. I will let you guys know when it is up and running.

Greetings from Brazil

I have been wondering what my first post should be about: the art work I make and other forms of art I am interested in, or my personal life. Hard to decide… but, as a good Brazilian, I decided to talk about Carnaval, and my experience parading with a Brazilian Samba School.

Mainly, Brazilians celebrate Carnaval in one of 2 ways: you either go out on the streets and dance after an adapted truck turned into a mobile stage where musicians play, or you parade in a Samba School, which is a group between 3,500 and 5,000 people dressed up in costumes that represent a theme. This is the way I picked!

The Samba Schools participate in a championship with awards for the best Schools of the year, with each School choosing its own theme. In Brazil, we root for Samba Schools like Americans root for their NFL team of choice, or Europeans root for soccer teams (well, we root for soccer teams too). The top league has around 15 Samba Schools competing for the top award and, if you do the math, you see that… yes, around 50,000 people are involved, only in this one league, in this one city. Huge, hum?

My School was “Rosas de Ouro” (Golden Roses), a very traditional Samba School in Sao Paulo. It hasn’t won the championship since 1994 and, well, this wasn’t their year, either. Not my fault!

It is an exhilarating experience, singing the theme song with 3,500 more people, at the sound of a 200 people drums band, and seeing the crowd get up from their seats and dance with you. I will never forget.

I will never forget how my feet (darn, my whole body!) felt at the end of the parade, either. You have to put this huge costume on 1hour or so before the parade starts. You have no place to sit, and the costume wouldn’t allow you to sit anyway. If I had to parade 1 more meter, I would die right there!

Well, all in all, “Rosas de Ouro”, you wait for me in 2010. I just feel that will be our year!