Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Brazilian Canoe Art by Benedito Calixto


Sad times in Brazil, with firm evidence of the Airbus crash just emerging. But Brazilian correspondent Silvio Antunha sends information about an artist who documented the wonderful dugout canoes of his country. Benedito Calixto (1853-1927) was Silvio's grand-uncle on his mother's side. Silvio sent several pertinent links, all in Portuguese, but well worth checking out even if, like me, you are afflicted by "American's Disease" and can't do anything but English.
http://br.geocities.com/benedicto_calixto/pagina_marinhas.htm
http://www.novomilenio.inf.br/santos/calixt45.htm
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedito_Calixto

The first of the links above, from which I borrowed the painting at the top of this post, has some formatting problems, but if you move your cursor carefully along the right-hand column of thumbnails, you'll eventually find the links to larger images. (No problems with the left-hand column.) The image of the artist himself, below, is from the Wikipedia site.


Silvio points out that the artist's name translates as Sacred Goblet (i.e., Holy Grail?).

I've written about Brazilian dugouts previously, mostly with Silvio's valuable input. This link will bring them all up. If you want still more, there's some great stuff on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8yHb43wjzE&NR=1 Dugout regatta sailing action: these things seem to behave beautifully in a chop, and seem surprisingly forgiving of "bad" technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow11ZqvMWEM Mainly a slide show with some nice images of dugout construction. The image that appears around 1:25 shows some of the nicest lines I've ever seen on a dugout.

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