...old nets...
...Povoa de Varzim´s coast grow houses and masseira fields create harmony and balance in the unbalanced world.
‘During this time I had to move from my apartment and saw a ‘village’ rock house for rent. The ‘village’ house is the birthplace of story, narrative, folklore, and the fairytale lives we fantasize and want to live. I decided to live in the stone house for a while to inhabit a different mindset, a perspective shaped by my surroundings. I found myself living through one of Portugal´s worst winters that killed 18 people in Lisbon and displaced thousands. It snowed, it hailed, and storms blew out my fuse box several times. Wind tore down electrical lines, floods swept around me. But the house was a fortress. I view this house as an aware entity. As an animist, in this belief, rocks hold stories, memories, moods, desires. They are not inert matter but living, spiritual and sentient ‘relatives’ that can communicate, and share in social relationships with humans.’ Excerpt from MauMau Blood Dreams in Projects. Storm 2026 on paper in Selected Work.
...up to the sleeping loft...
...making almond milk...the kitchen is cool, simple.
Working inside or outside on veranda.
Atomic testing Pacific 1946, from film,Tate London 2025
Current
Revista Procedamente ESP, Selected Painting, Film, https://www.revista-fanzineprocedimentum.com/pdf/procedimentum%20numero%2015/3.%20cecelia%20chapman.pdf
UnlikelyStories USA, Midnight in Zamora, Peoples Laws
https://www.unlikelystories.org/content/peoples-laws-and-midnight-in-zamorra
Upcoming
Interalia Magazine, MauMau Blood Dreams project in Emerging Ideas 2026
Arteidolia Press NY Anthology, Postcards SummerMail2020
Black Winter 3, 2026 postcard
MauMau Blood Dreams 2025 rewrites folklore narrative for an uncertain future.
I found old Portuguese folktales at a government website by accident. They are shocking, brutal stories. Soon after I became aware of the tattooed rocks in Valença, Portugal, near where I lived. The designs carved in rock are the first stories, about animals, events, hunters and warriors. The rock art became Bronze Age word of mouth folktales. Rewritten in the 17th century for sophisticated audiences, fairytales always have happy endings.
Excerpt MauMau Blood Dreams 2026. Here, one of 8 collage postcards, found artifact, photography.
Alexander Kluge, "Human beings are not interested in reality. They can't be; it's the human essence. They have wishes. These wishes are strictly opposed to any ugly form of reality. They prefer to lie than to become divorced from their wishes..."
An eleventh-century monk wrote in his guide-book for religious pilgrims that first-century Romans trained their armies precisely where I live, and in Galicia. He is an exceptionally gossipy monk, and adds that the armies were deeply disturbed here. The white-haired locals, the mists and fog, rain, winds, the cold sea, and strong currents. But mostly the women they called ‘witches’ completely freaked them out. Caesar arrived to inspect his armies and left immediately....
Excerpt, Midnight In Zamora 2026, Portugal.
I live in the lettuce growing industry world capital of the Iberian west coast. Behind the Navais beach golf course is a dirt-road labyrinth of vinyl-covered half-dome grow houses. It is a BuckminsterFullerian dystopic hallucination filled with lettuce in shocking colors of chlorophyll.
Who is all this lettuce for?
Bugs Bunny knows.
And so rabbit hunters and dogs run the roads and fields on weekends.
Excerpt, Yet To Come, Portugal, Iberian Winter 2026