Hello dear beloveds.
My name is Sara Cristina Casadinho Bernardino Dias, I was born on the 17th of March 1982, in Caldas Da Rainha, Portugal.
In the 1800’s-1900’s, Caldas da Rainha was the capital of pottery in Portugal; because of the richness in clay soils the ceramists had easier access to the clay . It’s a city with lots of history from the time of the Kings and Queens due to its thermal waters, including art, sculpture, and painting.
Visiting Caldas da Rainha today, art is very present, it is the cradle of Bordallo Pinheiro ceramics.
Recently, I recalled one of my first conscious need to be able to draw, I must have been round about 3 years old, when consciously, I desired to draw a flower with petals.
Looking at the flowers inside the vase on my mother’s siting room table, not understanding how I could draw a flower or the petals.
During that time, my parents went to visit a friend, she was elderly and sick in bed, I remember this lady’s room as if it was today. When we reached the house, I remember entering her room where she was lying in bed, other friends of hers were also there. I remember the adults around her bed talking to one another, I came close to the lady, and started talking to her. As I came close to her on her bedside table, she had a paper and pen.
At my age, all I could draw were circles, before the circles I could only scribble (I still have some books that belonged to my mother, were all scribbled). I got the pen and paper and having the attention of the lady all to myself, I showed her what I could do, my great achievement at the time.
Draw a circle.
When I drew the circle, she was amazed of what I had done (I know today, that she was not amazed, but as adults we sort of do that to encourage children to carry on). Then right next to the circle drew another circle, and so on around the first circle that I had drawn, till I completed the circle with circles. She said to me, “Ho! Look, a flower!”
I was so amazed how easy it was to draw a flower! Petals! I’d found out!
She then said, “Now draw a line. That is the stem of the flower.”
As we were saying goodbye to the lady, she told me to take my drawing with me. I remember being eager to reach home. The first thing I did as soon as I got home, was get a paper and pen to draw more flowers. I was so proud of my achievement!
I was born to a father who was a ceramist, and my mother worked for an Artist named, Figueiredo Sobral born in 1926 and passed away in 2010. He was a painter, sculptor, and poet. Figueiredo also wanted to make tapestries out of his artwork.
In Portugal you could order tapestries from the Porto Alegre Tapestries. To date, it still exists. but it was expensive for him to get his tapestries done there, so Quina his wife said she would try doing one, in her own style. The first tapestry was a success. From there on the tapestries grew in demand, so Sobral and Quina had to start employing, and the first person to come and work with Quina was my mother in the 1960’s.
Sobral and Quina signed an exclusive contract with an Art Gallery in the United States, which from what I know belonged to a man named Tanoak. From information relayed to me, one of the tapestries sown by my mother was sold to the White house, ordered by the American president at the time, Jimmy Carter.
The tapestries were gaining success, Tap Portugal had ordered a tapestry for their branch offices in Lisbon; the bank of Portugal, Caixa Geral de Depositos also ordered a tapestry for their new Branch office at the time, in Lisbon. One tapestry ordered by the Rytz hotel in Huston was so big 18 women had to work on it. They were exporting tapestries worldwide.
Before 1974 Portugal was living under the communist regime and artists did not have freedom of expression, so Sobral and his family moved to Brazil, where he could express himself freely. Sobral and Quina did not continue with the tapestries, but an architect friend of Sobral, continued the work with the art Gallery, for there were a few women that were employed at the atelier and the tapestries were selling well.
The tapestries continued to be done till the year 1989. My mother fell sick and passed away with cancer, America was also going through a financial depression. Not many tapestries were being sold, so the gallery closed not long after my mother’s passing away, and the manufacturing of the tapestries stopped.
I was doing tapestry already inside my mothers’ womb. When I was born, my mother had my cradle with her in the atelier. Till the age of 7 I grew up around the smell of wool, burlap and the vast colours of wool. The seed of art, I believe was already planted with in me, since the day I was conceived. I believe nothing happens by chance; I strongly believe there is a reason why I was born into the family which I came into being in this world.
My father never saw ceramics as an art, but rather as an industrial means to gain money. As a child I did not see that, I saw ceramics as art. I felt I was the luckiest child on earth, for all other parents in my point of view at the time were working conventional jobs, but I had parents doing things out of the normal. I would accompany my father many times to his factory, for when my brother was born 3 years later, after me, my mother would take care of my brother and I would spend most of my time with my father in his factory. I still remember the snails, little dolls and houses I would make out of clay, that my father would bake in the kiln.
Cutting a long story short. When my mother passed away, my father moved to South Africa with me and my brother. I was 7 years old and my brother 4 years old at the time.
Later in life I did have the wanting to follow an artistic path, but my father never encouraged me in that path, for he thought an artist could not make a living out of art. I thought of becoming an architect, but my father discouraged me for I was not very strong in mathematics. At the age of 16 I left South Africa to go live alone in Portugal working as a hairdresser, one year later I moved to Switzerland and today am settled in the French Alps
.Throughout my life I have done numerous things, tried so many jobs, baby siting, hairdresser, I have a sports degree, worked in construction renovation helping in the managing of the company. These are only some of the jobs mentioned, but none brought satisfaction to my soul.
My family and I decided to move to Portugal in 2017 from Fance/ Switzerland. I decided at the time to study architecture as this would be beneficial for our construction company.
The company did not do well, and I had to halt my studies in 2020 with the Covid pandemic, deciding after the pandemic to move back to France. France is the country that is in my heart and is an inspiration to my artistic side.
I believe, the time I attended my architect course, was what I needed as a base guideline for what is in my heart, Art. In the first year of the architect course, the course was very art based and driven. In the first year of the course, we had art classes where we had to learn to draw shoes, clothes, stones, point of perspective, cubism, etc. We learned about history of art and the art movements, we had to learn to amplify drawings by hand… and so on.
The aim was to learn to train the hand to draw, for in today’s world everything is computerised. The common trend is that hand drawn architecture is a thing of the past and their objective was to show the importance of using the pencil or pen with the hand.
This is a very short story resuming my process that has led me to where I am now. My dream is to maintain alive what my mother did. Till the age of 7, I was constantly in contact with art, with ceramics. I constantly heard words like, artist, architect, clay, glaze, ceramics, atelier. My mother crocheted in her free time, my sister did knitting and created her own clothes, some of my clothes too.
I believe each one of us comes into this world with a mission. I was brought up by my father who said I would make it well as a secretary or in the financial world working in an office. I believe that sometimes life gets hard to place us on the right track, and if we are not perceptive to the signs, it gets harder and harder. I truly believe that my track is in the art world.
Art is something I cannot explain, it flows in my veins, it flows in my inner soul, it is a way for me to express what I do not really know how to express through words. It’s something that needs to be told and seen, that is still in the unseen in the uncreated, I am only a vessel to that which wants and needs to be born. We all have our life path to follow; it is so simple, yet so difficult to find what is really calling us.
I believe there is a realm of thought, where all thoughts exist, where all creation is present. I believe the tapestries that my mother did are still creations that are not complete, that want a continuation, they have their wanting to come into physical manifestation, I am only a physical vessel for the unseen to become seen.
There are numerous artists out there, who have lived, are living and are to come. Each with their calling to their own expression. Some artists in the past (still today)have used art as a form of communication to express their frustration towards politics and world states, their frustrations.
My inner calling is to express myself in a way that my art brings peace, harmony, and tranquillity.
For art is a personal process. A personal process, where it takes me hours, days and months to create one tapestry. The process of imagining, a drawing to come up for the tapestry. How in tune am I with my inner world? For when I am creating, this is a personal process that only I know and feel, that no one else feels or lives in my place. Art is a manifestation of creation.
When someone looks at my work, they do not really have to understand or interpret what I am trying to express, what I think or feel, but rather what is the observer interpreting in its personal interior universe. May my art bring peace, harmony, and tranquilly to who is looking, or to the space where it is exposed to.
For I believe is that there are millions of people living everyday with a turmoil of negative emotions within themselves that they do not share with the world.
For art for me, is a state of peace, harmony, and tranquillity to my soul (trying to calm the inner hurricane), if the observer feels this when looking at my work, my objective achieved and complete.
To me art is the portal from where all thought exists. Until what point is creation complete? I believe it is never complete. For there must always be refence to something for something to come into existence. For I believe when I look at something and have the inspiration to create something out of that something, it is the conscious wanting of that something to continue to evolve.
I hope through my experience, to be an inspiring model for people to pursue their inner calling, their inner dreams, that it’s never too late to listen to your heart.
For nothing comes easy in this contrast reality, a lot of dedication, hard work, many hours, weekends and having no holidays must be consecrated to our goals. Without work and dedication, we cannot see results, but when it’s done from the heart, the hard work is not hard work, it’s pleasure.
Sara Casadinho