Lisboa
July 18, 2010
The train from Porto to Lisboa terminated at Santa Apolonia Station. My host and helpful Portugal print-tour liaison, Fátima Ferreira, met me on the platform. After greeting me, Fátima asked how I had liked Porto. When I responded that I had, she quickly stated that I would like Lisbon more. The two cities are in a typical north-south rivalry but everyone agrees that the light in Lisbon makes the city special. Although the two cities have an almost identical orientation to water, both built on the north bank of a river where it ends at the Atlantic, Porto and Lisbon have entirely different moods.
Fátima took me directly to the apartment that would be mine during my two-week stay in Lisbon. Owned by the second studio I would be teaching at, CPS – Centro Português de Serigrafia, the flat was large with a similar layout to a San Franciscan Victorian. The accommodations were basic but it was a great pleasure to have a private space where I could make my own coffee and meals.
We dropped off my bags and Fátima took me to the store to get some groceries. I stocked up on salad greens, nuts, cheese, wine, milk and canned fish and beans. After dropping off the groceries we drove to the Belém district, near the river Tejo, to do some site seeing. We started at the Manueline style Jerónimos Monastery; walked to the Belém Cultural Center; passed through a handcraft market; took the pedestrian underpass to walk along the embarcadero, past monuments commemorating historical Portuguese colonial conquests, to the tower of Belém.
Before getting back in the car, Fátima took me to the famous Belém pastry shop, and bought us pastéis de Belém, small egg custard pastries served hot and dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar. We ate them warm from the oven as we walked back to the car.
From Belém, Fátima and I drove to the outskirts of the city to pick up her husband to take him with us to dinner in the central district of Chiedo, where we had a reservation at a restaurant with a terrace adjacent to a square where the Symphony was performing concert as part of free summer entertainment public programming. From the restaurant’s open door we listened to the music while we ate.
In the morning I enjoyed making my coffee in a basic electric American coffeemaker. Making my own brew was the thing I missed most from back home, so I savored the simple joy of operating my own percolator. After breakfast I walked around a university and the parliament building to arrive at Agua-Forte where my course would begin a few days later. The course at AGAF had been the seed from which my whole European tour had sprouted so there was a feeling of coming to the source upon arriving at the studio.
Fátima and I prepared acid, made a batch of soap ground, organized materials, and worked out the proper cooking time for the perfect rosin melt in their new oven. After our work we went to the Paula Rego Museum in Cascais where we had lunch and walked through the collection of paintings and prints. From the museum we drove through foggy costal hills to Sintra and then beyond to a remote suburban art supply store.
Back at my apartment I made a big salad with fish, olives and beans, had a glass of wine and looked through my guidebook before going to bed on my little cot in the living room of a large flat on, rua dos industrias, street of industries.
The next morning I retuned to AGAF to finish up preparations for the workshop. I left before lunch to go back to my flat where I picked up my swimming suit and towel and headed to the beach. On the train in the direction of Cascais, I passed many river beaches crowded with sunbathers. The warm water along the Tejo attracts bathers but I was told it was polluted so I stayed on the train beyond the mouth of the river and got off at Estoril. I placed my towel on the sand, reclined under the afternoon sun and listened to various romance languages mingle with the sound of waves.
The Atlantic water was cold and gray and the ocean floor, a murky mixture of rocks and sea plants. I braved the waves a few times for short periods, each time walking on shore, flushed pink from the icy temperature. Once the sun had set and the ocean breeze chilled the air, I got back on the train and returned to the city with sandy feet. From the Santos stop, walking up the hill to my flat while wearing flat-bottomed flip-flops was a chore. Every sidewalk in Lisbon is covered in limestone motifs. The walkways wind and undulate over hills, giving one the feeling that the city was built on the belly of a serpent. When wet from rain the stones shine like gems but are treacherously slippery.
I met with Joao Prates, the director of CPS in the morning. He greeted me in the gallery across the street from my apartment and showed me their collection. Print publisher and workshop, CPS has a huge roster of artists and an unusual business plan, offering membership print subscriptions. http://www.cps.pt/
Joao showed me prints from their twenty years of publishing and took me to the studio on the same street, next door to the apartment. On the first floor a shirtless man stood on a platform in front of a press feeding and extracting paper. On the second floor the Marçal men were awaiting my arrival in the etching studio. Marçal senior is the master printer of etching and one of the artists represented by CPS. His two sons, Rui and Pedro are also printers, born into the trade. Joao helped translate as we verified that all the necessary materials would be ready for the workshop the following week. With almost everything prepared I left the men with a few tasks and their assurance that all would be in order for the first day of class.
In the evening I boarded the old yellow streetcar and stayed on until the end of the line. Up and down hills, through narrow passages, around sharp turns, past monuments and lookout points, the vehicle wound around the old part of the city. On the way back towards the center of town I tested my intuition and got off and then got lost. I stumbled across the landmark public elevator and walked through large open squares surrounding monuments. Eventually I found my way to the square where I had gone on my first night. I watched a little bit of a free modern dance performance and then went through the shops. At a large department store I bought a ticket to the Caetano Veloso concert scheduled a few days later. On the way home I bought a bottle of vinho verde to bring back to the flat.
On the first day of the workshop at Agua-Forte I greeted members of the print workshop collective and gave a presentation. After my demonstration of soap ground in the small studio, the dozen participants worked independently with a level of respect for each other and efficiency of space I had never witnessed. Thanks to the impeccable organization of Fátima Fereirra and Teresa Pato the workshop progressed smoothly and went off without a hitch. http://www.agua-forte.com/
During the four-day workshop we lunched as a group at different cafes in the neighborhood. Each day the menu choices were translated to me: big fish or small fish, big melon or small melon, white wine or red wine followed by espresso. The Portuguese claim to have 365 ways of preparing baccalau, c odfish. It was on the menu everywhere I went, but I was told that their own oceans are depleted and much of the cod they eat comes from Nova Scotia.
Upon hearing of my interest in yoga, Amelia, one of the AGAF members, did some research and found a yoga studio in the neighborhood and brought me a schedule and the name of a teacher that who spoke English. After my second day of teaching at AGAF I went to the Centro do Yoga to take a class from Filipe. The class was unlike an American yoga class in many ways but I enjoyed Filipe’s soothing Portuguese instructions interspersed with English commands and Sanskrit chanting. His soft-spoken Portuguese sounded like Spanish whispered into a strong ocean wind, much of the language dissolving into air.
My friends from AGAF picked me up from the yoga studio and took me to a Fado restaurant. Below and behind the castle of king Jorge, there is a neighborhood, which is the birthplace of Fado music. Fado musicians have been living and performing in the neighborhood since the early 1800’s. Each night, singers come down from their apartments in the neighborhood to circulate and perform in bars and restaurants. My friends took me to a small establishment operated by one woman and her cook. The food was excellent and the entertainment was outstanding. All evening, a cue of men waited outside the door of the restaurant to sing their cheeky or emotional interpretations of traditional songs while three crowded tables of diners sang and clapped and ate and drank.
Whenever I asked for clarification about Portuguese cultural customs, the answer was usually “We have Fado.” Unlike their “loud talking” Spanish neighbors, the Portuguese are typically soft-spoken and slightly melancholic, like the mournful music of Fado. Another word that describes their attitude is Saudade, meaning to desire something that is no longer present. The emotion is described as being similar to longing or worry but they claim that exact translation is impossible.
On my day off between workshops I took the train to Cascais. Through the beachside town I passed shops selling beachwear and jewelry, and bought a sundress and some traditional Portuguese silver filigree earrings. Later that evening I wore the ensemble to the Caetano Veloso concert, which was an incredible show. In the airless coliseum women, including myself, swiftly flicked hand fans, and their neighbors also profited from the manual breeze. Caetano gave an energetic performance backed by a group of young musicians, a prop hang glider and a video of a soaring ride over Rio. To the thrill of the audience, he performed his song protesting Guantanamo Bay prison, which was passionately anti-American. The man sitting next to me, sensing my discomfort, kindly told me that although the song was anti-American but not anti-me.
My neighbor during the concert, Jorge, an independent security consultant and hobby photographer, became my friend and tour guide during my last week in Lisbon. Wherever we went he announced to the host or waiter (much to my embarrassment) in Portuguese (which I was beginning to understand) that he was with a famous American artist. The servers seemed to believe his exhaggeration as evident in the hasty and fussy service and Jorge’s smug smile.
My last workshop of the summer tour began in utter chaos at CPS. As I should have predicted, the Marçal men had done none of the preparation tasks they had promised to do. Instead, on the first morning of the course, the men resisted my requests, created comical obstacles at every turn and contradicted information I was giving to the group. With participants speaking Portuguese, French and English, on the first day we had to establish a method for communication. The Portuguese participants decided to ignore my instruction and learn from Marçal senior who was privately teaching his personal style of à la poupeé plate wiping. The Swiss and Belgian participants, who spoke no English and little Portuguese, were helped with French translation by an English participant, Tina Clay. After our first session I came close to quitting because I felt the quality I represented, through my association with Crown Point Press, was being compromised, but stuck it out for reasons of personal pride and professionalism.
Tina, being a sympathetic ex-pat, rushed to my aid during demonstrations and consoled my distress each day during lunchtime picnics. Tina had come to Portugal a year prior from Paris where she had had a thriving career as part of an acrobatic team that ended after the tragic death of her partner. She had planned to perform and teach acrobatics in Portugal but had been out of work for a while. Tina became and instant friend from the first day of the workshop and I was grateful for her gracious invitation to her home in an apartment near the ocean after we spent an evening riding bikes along the pedestrian beachside trail that lead from town to town, parallel with the train line.
The last days of an incredible teaching tour around Europe ended with exhausted relief as the CPS course came to an end. After two months away from the US I was longing for American comforts and the feeling of being invisible in my native culture where I usually feel alien. With a little saudade I packed my suitcase and spent the day before my departure at Museu Calouste Gulbenkian and the Centro do Arte Moderna where I spent hours exploring the collections and walking around the gardens between the two buildings.
