COLECÇÕE S
OTÁRIO
Luisa Mar telo
Para o meu Pai,
There are numerous collections in my family from which 12 are my father’s. We live in a small apartment by the river. As we never moved I have very defined memories of our collections which cover every wall and shelf of my house. As the main collector is very unorganized with his belongings, they have all been arranged by my mother, who baptized them as “As Colecções Otário” (The Shambolic Collections). Away from Porto, this catalogue is made of memories of my home and my family. These paintings will soon be working in pairs with photographs. By comparing both it will be possible to see how well I remember these collections, with distortions of time and distance.
My father is the big hero of this catalogue. I asked if collecting was like a game but he believes it is more like a desease.
This is my favourite collection of the house: they are Art Nouveau flower jars made with many layers of different colors of glass.
My father’s trays collection.
He also collected these little african sculptures of girls, each one with a different funny hair.
I can see the reason why my father would collect traditional Portuguese ceramics, or the whale tails from Aรงores, where we spent every summer until i was 11. But why collect toy cars that never drove out of their pachaging?
Every collection is organised by my mother’s good taste. Once this order was disturbed by a small earthquake which made many victims amongst our collection of tiny clay chinese people.
After my granny died, we found many drawers full of match boxes. The kitten is the predominant theme.
My be she
My granny Nilza has only one type of flower in her house: the geranium. She collects all different colours and tipes of geraniums she can find. y father is the big hero of this book, whose
eautiful collections cover everywall and elve in the house.
It would be verry unfair to exclude my godmother from this book. She collects rings and they are so many that one day, she decided to super glue 2 thirds of her collection into these massive tower/sculptures that are now in the living room.
I too had a collection: animal shaped soaps! Althoug I cannot remember the last time i saw it, I kept them in a yellow box in my room.