Regina Vater

RV> I think that since I was three or four years old I have loved everything visual. I used to draw all the time. My mother used to say that when I grew up I should marry the owner of a stationary store. I discovered very early that to be an artist is something very important. I came to this conclusion because of my doctor Dr. Calazans Luz, my father's colleague. Every time I had a consultation with him he asked me to pay for my visit with a drawing of [an Afro-Brazilian] baiana. I don't know why, but I loved to draw baianas. It seems that since then I was interested by how my Brazilian roots could inspire me as an artist.

When I was around nine years old, in my usual naughtiness, I started to experiment with some installations in my family's Copacabana apartment. After learning about the hanging gardens of Babylon, which had fascinated me, I decided to make a replica of them at home. My mother had gone shopping and left my sister and me alone at home. The house was filled with flowers because of a birthday party earlier that week. Under the spell of my experimental spirit I used a pin to carve out part of the wax in the wooden parquet floor of the living room, and there I stuck many flowers. When my mother opened the entrance door she was assaulted with the vision of my sister and I watering that fantastic garden.

I think this was my first installation, but not the last. Many others followed during that period with the same panache and joy extended by the freedom of experimentation. My mother scolded me a lot, but I think that underneath her stern exterior she was amused by our creativity. As I entered adolescence I started to draw and paint exhaustively. So much so that my father finally gave me some oil paints. He forgot to give me brushes though, and the day those oil tubes arrived I spent the whole night awake painting with my fingers.

My father, who didn't know very much about art, wanted me to study painting with one of his clients, a Belgian painter called Van Back. But being already aware about Van Gogh paintings I thought very little of the academic Van Back, and I continued in my self taught style until the day that I discovered Frank Schaeffer, who gave painting classes for a group of artists in his studio very close to my home.

Because my father didn't want to pay for my classes with Frank, I resolved to work to be able to pay for them. I started by working with my father in a clinic he had in Rio and I also gave private geometry classes. That was what happened until I started the architecture school. By then I also started to paint at the Ibere Camargo studio. Ibere helped me to free myself of many rules in art making. I was not very easy to understand that in Art, there are no rules. That it is you who make the rules. But I think that both the experimentation of my childhood and as well certain encounters I had with Ibere in the beginning of the 60's and with Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark latter on in the seventies, helped me a lot to understand what Gilberto Gil says "I am the maker of my own road."

The faith I had that Art could be my Road was so immense that I dropped out from architecture school. But until today I have a very special relationship with Architecture. That is clear in the fact that I did more than 150 installations (which points out my deep relationship with "SPACE"- please read the text I wrote about space in my portal at (sambaqui section) http://www.imediata.com

And my belief that Art is overall the practice of freedom, invention and experimentation (what lead me to a work totally not commercial) pushed me to use the precepts of order, organization and harmony learned at architecture school to invent a parallel career for myself as a graphic artist. And since very early (in the sixties, I produced many graphic works in Rio, including movie posters for the Faria brothers and Luis Carlos Barreto. I was even invited by Fernando Lobo to produce a drawing for the Tropicalia Long Play jacket. The Phillips Company paid me and framed my gauche, which I saw hung on one of the Phillips walls, many years later, when I made for them the jacket for Calabar, by Chico Buarque de Hollanda. They didn't use my design for Tropicalia because the manager of the group Guilherme Araujo opted to use something that could display a photo of the members of that musical movement. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade also came to talk with me when he was filming Macunaima to see if I could do the titles for his film. But what could a shy girl like myself do to compete with artists who already had an established network?

This was one of the factors that made me to move to São Paulo in 1970. I believed (and I was right) that there I would have more of a chance to survive as a graphic designer not only because São Paulo has a bigger graphic industry but because São Paulo is a emigrants' land where the value of what you do has more importance than the relationships that you establish. In this sense São Paulo was not just a training field, but also a jump board for my life abroad.

RCP>> I would like you talked me about your artist's book. How did you initiate that kind of production?

RV> I made my first artist's book in New York in 1973. It was part of the Luxo-Lixo series. I made it in silkscreen which I printed myself at the Pratt Manhattan studios where I studied printmaking. It was composed of a small brown envelope containing sheets of clear film with printed words. When the films were overlaid, the words formed a poem.

RCP> > What are your favorite books? Why do you associate the artist book with installations?

RV> - In 1974 I lived in Paris and there I made another book with black and white photocopies using photos which I took with a photographer called Miro during the whole Christmas day inside the Chatelet station. We took the photos always from the same point looking across to the other side of the platform. I was inspired by a text by Henry Miller where he speaks about Christmas underground and it was also inspired by a parable that Einstein used to explain relativity. I like this book a lot, actually several copies of it where stolen from several shows that I participated in, including one that Lucy Lippard organized in the 80's at the Franklin Furnace. The title of this show was The Copy Cat Show.

RCP> Why do you associate artist's book with performances?

RV> I also like very much the Book of Hope, which I made during my residence at the Art pace Foundation in San Antonio, Texas which was also part of the installation titled The Lady of Hope this installation was inspired by Oxumare (the rainbow serpent) and the Brazilian syncretism with the black Madonna of Aparecida. The book was a result of a compilation of many poems, letters (almost as written ex-votos) connected with hope. Part of a correspondence I received from various poets, artists, friends non artists, people from different social ranks including servants of some friends in Brazil. Because I printed the whole book on my home computer printer, I only could produce one single book that was beautifully handmade with help of my Art Pace grant. Because of that it received a special attention in my Art Pace catalogue.

Because this installation has to do with the altars to Isis and to the Black Madonnas in the European Cathedrals, the book is almost like a prayer book although many of its contributions have nothing to do with prayer.

RCP> First of all I would like that you tell us a little bit about your friendship with John Cage how he influenced your art?

RV> Did you receive my text about Cage, which was also published (in Portuguese and English) at http://www.imediata.com? I think that you could find there the answers for this question.

RCP> Could you tell me about your book Sounds Good?

As for the technical part, the book is composed by smiles:

Did you photograph those smiles? And about the digital part of it, the design, is it also yours? Or is it only an idea that you had? Do you work as a graphic artist in the computer? If the answer is positive what is the software you use?

RV> Yes and Yes (I have an immense pleasure in the graphic work which I made in Brazil during many years to survive - I made many jacket for books and Long plays. I made the layout for Chico Buarque de Hollanda's Calabar and even the first jacket for Tropicalia which was rejected by Guilherme Guimarães because it didn't have the portrait of the participants of the movement which after all he decided to include in that cover. I use Photoshop.

RCP> The Form and the concept:

The idea of creating an accordion book was pretty good, suggests a shower of smiles or that smile is contagious. It also escapes from the linear narrative. Could be that with this format, what you intended it was to show the possibility of the expansion of this concept "The most revolutionary act one can commit in our world now-a-days is to be happy." Or you didn't think about any of this and you didn't use anything rational, just your intuition?

RV> I liked very much your intelligent and sensible interpretation but frankly the results come intuitively from my experience as a graphic artist. Because I intend to continue the book in its back, I did that to give a sense of loop (no end) just as a vote for that the existence of smiles never finishes in the world. This is what I intended to reach with the design but I do not know if people read in that way.

People interested in the Sounds Good book should visit the Printed Matter site at:
http://www.printedmatter.org/ and at http://www.imediata.com/sounds_good/

RCP> Interaction. Tell me about the installation Sounds Good and the public's reaction to it...

RV> Well, 4.000 people pass by the installation every week. Because I am not there all the time, it is very difficult to know. But it is a very white installation (that gives it an inner light) and it is decorated with smiles, which everyone tells me is very uplifting. Many people have thanked me because they say that they need something like this in the present moment (March 2003).

RCP> You are a visual artist. When and why did you develop an interest in poetry?

RV> During my childhood in "Jardim Botânico", a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro close to the city's Botanical Gardens, I had a neighbor who was a poet. According to my mother, he was a cousin of the "Prince of the Poets" (Alberto de Oliveira) - a title which I thought incredible and magic well. This old man used to compose poems for me. This used to give me a sense of very special importance. The sister of my father also kept saying that we were related to the "Dove's Poet" - Raymundo Correa. I remember that I made a serial photo work in Venice (1976) connected to the subject of time, in homage to him. The subject of time, by the way is a theme that I have been pursuing for long time (since 1970.)

My father also used to say "your great-great-grand father (his great-grandfather) was a very important poet." There is even a square with his statue in "São Luis do Maranhã"o (the capital of a very traditional state in the North of Brazil which was considered the Brazilian Athens). He was talking about Odorico Mendes, whose real importance I verified with Haroldo de Campos many years later (Mendes was the first translator in Brazilian Portuguese of Homer and Virgil, and did excellent work). My mother, who always helped me with my first grade Portuguese lessons, is also a natural poet and loves poetry. I remember that in my French classes I even used to write poetry in French.

There is even a funny episode: in my adolescence I used to write poetry all the time. Because I was on the staff of a school newspaper, one day I went with my colleagues to the house of Manuel Bandeira to interview him. I brought a copybook filled with my poems. After the interview, I shyly asked him to read my poems. After a fast glance through them he turned to me and asked "my dear girl, do you know what chicken pox is?" I answered that it was an illness that almost every child has. He replied "in the same way, poetry it is something that always attacks during adolescence." From that day on, I archived my copybook and all my pretensions to become a poet. Because I was already drawing furiously, I turned all my passions to the visual. But poetry never ceased to be important and venerated by me.

In the sixties, when I was already supporting myself as a graphic designer, I created the design for a poem by Eliane Zagury (O Mercado, published by Cadernos Brasileiros). This helped open my eyes to Concrete Poetry.

Until then, Drummond (an extremely very well-known and good Brazilian poet) for me was the king. He even wrote a poem exclusively for me (poem which was lost by the Petite Gallerie when I gave it to them to be framed. I will never forgive them for this loss.)

When I started my series Knots in 1972 (Drummond wrote about them in one of his columns in the Jornal do Brasil, one of Brazil's most well known news papers) I realized then how important a title is, and what an intrinsic poetic part of the artwork it is. From then on after all the knowledge I acquired about Duchamp, for me, to give a title to a work is as important as the concept with which I am working on.

In the beginning of the seventies I was introduced to Concrete Poetry by chance, by Olga Savary (a well know Brazilian poet.) I was already living in São Paulo. Olga came to visit me just after a visit she made to the poet Augusto de Campos. He had given her his poem Lixo-Luxo (Luxury-Garbage) that she brought with her to my studio. I confess that I became fascinated and it never left my memory. My husband says that a seminal work is that one that comes to your mind in recurrences, over and over again.

When I arrived in New York in 1973, at the first impact from the city, that poem came to my mind as a large billboard. I started a large series based on this inspiration. It was then that I started to experiment with visual poetry, and produced in silkscreen in the Pratt Institute for a small artist's book titled Garbage.

To these series also belongs the Postalixos or Land(e)scapes. These Postalixos were part of a mail art project I did. After that came the Scul(ru)ptures, photos of garbage that I found forming by chance something that looked to me like sculpture. I composed an audiovisual of photos of New York garbage and New York luxury. I wrote a poem for this project that Helio Oiticica read when we did the sound together. Actually, Helio liked the piece so much that he insisted not only that I write to Augusto de Campos telling him about the project, but also helped me with the sound. We did a concert for live radio and TV sounds by four hands without editing at the same time that Helio read the poem. I participated at the 1976 Venice Biennial (the first international show totally dedicated to ecology) with this work.

As you an see I came to visual Poetry through a very natural and organic path. But it took a long time until I had the courage to consider myself a poet. Poetry for me belongs to the terrain of the sacred.

But it is not only visual poetry that attracts me. Poetry is Poetry. Recently overtaken by a burst of audacity (inspired by the philosophical mind of Edgar Morin and perhaps also by the desire of sharing with others part of my narrative poetry), I sprinkled the Edgar Morin, http://edgarmorin.sescsp.org.br , site with some of my poems. If this site is still up I will invite you to give a look at the following items: "mito, conhecimento, civilização, estetica, olhar, ignorância, exclusão, cultura, amor, caminho, intelectual, amizade, sujeito, sabedoria, compreensão, animais, crueldade, vida, círculo, música, terra, sabor, ação, verdade, viagem, morte, literatura." To find me you just click in the "próxima" in the internal section until you see my poems.

RCP> Do you consider your artist's book as visual poetry?

RV> Yes there is a strong connection of Artist's Book with Visual Poetry.

RCP> Do you have knowledge of the new technology tendencies (animation, interactivity for visual poetry?)

RV> Of course, I only didn't use them until now for lack of opportunity and for lack of instructor. My husband actually knows about these things and even teaches them but as you know "in house of iron worker the nails are made of wood".

RCP> Do you believe that only now poets have the means to realize what Mallarmé predicted with the Coup of Des?

RV> Art for me is the supreme territory of freedom therefore everything is possible in it. For me it is always the artist who invents his/hers own rules. But it is also important that we leave room in the experimental for the flowering of the intelligence of the content. Without content, everything is reduced to gratuitous gestures. The cultivation of Experimentation and the cultivated Content must come side by side.

RCP> Are you interested in the new technological poets and by the softwares that makes possible the creation of this new poetry?

RV> Yes, mainly by those ones who have something interesting to say. I do not know if I would like to waste my time with magical tricks.

RCP> Do you have expertise in some of the software?

RV> I already answered that. "In the house of the iron worker..."

RCP> "The Brazilian Visual Poetry Show" was the first time that you worked as a curator?

RV> No. In 1979 I curated an exhibition for the Nobe gallery (East 57Th Street, Manhattan) that included works by the following artists::

- AMALIA TOLEDO,
- ANNA BELLA GEIGER
- ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO
- ANNA SZULC
- BENÉ FONTELES
- BETTY LEIRNER
- CARLOS VERGARA
- CARLOS AUGUSTO LACAZ
- CILDO MEIRELES
- CLAUDIO TOZZI
- DIMITRI RIBEIRO
- EDGARD BRAGA
- FLORIANO RAISS
- FRANCISCO INARRA
- GABRIEL BORBA
- GRABRIEL ZELLMASTER
- GENILSON SOARES
- GILSELDA LEIRNER
- GRETTA
- HELIO OITICICA
- JULIO PLAZA
- LEONHARD FRANK DUCH
- LYGIA CLAK
- LYGIA PAPE
- LUCIANO FIGUEIREDO
- LUIZ FERREIRA
- MARIA CARMEM ALBERNAZ
- MARIA DO CARMO SECCO
- MARIA LUIZA SADI
- MARIO ISHICAWA
- MAURICIO FRIEDMAN
- NELSON LEIRNER
- NEWTON MESQUITA
- OSMAR RAMOS
- OSMAR FONSECA
- PAULO BRUSKY
- PAULO GARCEZ
- REGINA SILVEIRA
- REGINA VATER
- ROBERTO EVANGELISTA
- ROBERTO KEPLER
- ROGÉRIO LUZ
- RUBENS GUERCHMAN
- TERESA SIMÕES
- TUNEU
- TUNGA
- UBIRAJARA RIBEIRO
- VERA CHAVEZ BARCELLOS
- VERA SALAMANCA

This was perhaps the first show of Brazilian art in New York that highlighted the experimentation and the very contemporary side of our art. I curated a show of Super-8 Films for the Millenium also in New York where Ana Maria Maiolino and Paulo Brusky participated. I also curated a photography show for a gallery in the Village and in the beginning of the 80's a show of Latin American art in a gallery in New York state titled Latin American Visual Thinking. A total of twelve artists participated in this show, including Anna Bella Geiger, Ana Mendieta , Papo Colo, Liliana Porter, Camitzer, Catalina Parra, Cecilia Vicuna, Alfredo Jaar, and Juan Downey.

And in 1983 I was one the editors for the first issue of an art magazine published in the US about contemporary Latin American Art. Flue #2, vol. lll was a published by Franklin Furnance Archives, New York, and contained works by Roberto Evangelista, Lygia Clark, Lenora de Barros and Regina Silveira from Brazil, Luis Dias from Guatemala. Jonier Marin from Colombia and Padin from Uruguay among others.