“It’s a revolutionary act to make work from a place of happiness” –Renata Abbade
DRESS, MARRAKSHI LIFE from OROBORO.
Renata Abbade portraits by Marcelo Krasilcic
Métier: Visual Communication / Healing / Art / Fashion
Sources of inspiration: self-reflection, relationships, movement, plants, the sky, water, indigenous wisdom, mirrors
Sources of motivation: raising a human being, consciousness, people’s smile and gratitude
What makes you happy: roses, st. john’s wort, tulsi, seeing whales, hummingbirds or eagles, rain in California
Favorite reads: the writings of Brazilian poet Ryane Leão
Favorite tunes: silence
Favorite foods: chocolate mousse, strawberries
Favorite ways to unwind: looking inward
Beauty tips: self-love
What gets you in a working flow: a good night of sleep, a cup of coffee, 15 minutes to myself, a sink free of dishes, strong internet connection
What are you working on now: POSES/Program of Self-Encounters (www.poses.me), a practice of observing the senses and increasing self-awareness.
Favorite motto: Let the mystery be…
DRESS, NEON. RING, ABBY CARNEVALE. EARING,ULLA JOHNSON.
Tell us about your art. Start from the beginning.
You know it is always hard for artists to talk about their art!!!! I’ll try my best!
I’ve always been a crafty kid, and always had this deep fascination with colors, patterns, shapes and meaning. As a small child I did all kinds of painting, crochet, doll/soap/candle making, chocolate bonbons, you name it! I was never great at math, but I was excellent at geometry. My notebooks were mostly filled with drawings and poems. When I was about 13 years old, I would bring a sewing needle to school so I could carve “totems” out of chalk. I would then “preserve” them with nail polish… I loved surrealism, nonsensical dreamscapes, cosmic symbolism. I started working in fashion really young, at age 12. I asked my mom’s friend if I could work at her cotton knits clothing factory. They made mostly school uniforms, like t-shirts and sweatshirts. There was a silk screening guy, and he loved showing me how to do sunset gradient prints! I designed a few pieces that the pattern maker helped me with. I would cut them out of scrap fabric and the seamstresses would overlock it together on their break. I went to Faculdade Santa Marcelina to study fashion design, and had at least 4 different drawing/sketching classes every semester. It was a bit much, and being surrounded by such talented artists was overwhelming, so I started seeking out other mediums, like video and digital art. My college graduation project was a photo essay that looked as if Botero and Joel Peter Witkin had a love child. I took photos of a friend who was living with obesity at the time, mostly nude, wearing a series of accessories that Dudu Bertholini and I had created: thongs, hats, cuffs, boots. It was completely counter to the androgynous anorexic look of the 90’s. A mostly subconscious attempt to communicate about body neutrality and acceptance, and a way I found to overcome shame.
COAT, CRISTASEYA & DRESS, ICHI both from OROBORO. FANNY PACK, AMAPÔ.
I moved to NYC to work as a stylist in 2000, but the industry was shifting rapidly, digital photography was replacing film, emails were replacing faxes… I was very into the anthropological aspect of fashion, why we wear what we wear, adornment, desire, tribal connection… The logistics of styling, the competition and arrogance, and consumer culture was always abhorrent to me. I started doing video performances – basically dressing up, usually sequins were involved, lip syncing and dancing in public with my friend Ed Andrade shooting and no music playing! Once again, it was a lot about overcoming shame, and being seen. I became truly multidisciplinary, so I started calling myself a “fashion artist”. I did everything from fashion and props styling, to make-up, embroidery, textile design, accessories, ceramic jewelry, dancing, choreography, videos, photoshopped self-portraits… My fax cover sheets had newsprint photos of my face, and I used them to send out sample requests… It was fun.
In 2008 you were noted in a popular Brazilian magazine as one of the countries top ten geniuses. What kind of attention did you get from that designation?
Basically they chose the 10 most amazing (actual) geniuses from Brazil, who were doing remarkable things, like finding the cure for Parkinson’s, or uncovering remains of extinct civilizations in the Amazon Forest. I have no idea how they got to me, and I never asked them that! At the time I was touring with the Brazilian band CSS and they asked me to do a video for them. So I directed, produced, and performed in a video for their single – Left Behind. I danced on stage at Lollapalooza in front of an ocean of people… Talk about overcoming shame on a mega level!
Back then I had a line of ceramic accessories, mostly necklaces, that were inspired by landscapes, mountains, raindrops and the material itself. I always loved wearable ceramics, walking art, the elemental convergence of earth, water, air, and fire as adornment. The piece on me was about how multidisciplinary I was, and how that went against the current of the super-specialized. I was also renting dance studios to rehearse in at the time, so I would spend a lot of time observing my body in the mirror. That was when I started developing the Program of Self-Encounters (POSES), a self-awareness practice.
BLOUSE, SOFIE D’OR from OROBORO. NECKLACE, KELSEY QUAN.
You have worked with a multitude of mediums to express your vision, do you think it was a result of circumstance or just how you related to the material?
I believe everything I did and do is because of a need of mine. I make medicine, tinctures, teas, hair and skin products because I need healing. I observe myself because I need to know who I am in order to choose how to behave. I have a very deep need to express myself, and most of my life I had to be resourceful in finding the appropriate materials and space to do so. I have a strong commitment and sense of responsibility for fulfilling my own needs. And it transpires in choosing my mediums. I prefer to work with local resources, so that I can have some kind of guarantee of origin, how it was cultivated or extracted. Not having access to investment capital also determines my choices. If I need to create something, it must cost next to nothing in a monetary sense.
Your work is expressed in a multitude of mediums. Tell me about your definition of Materialism?
I’m not very materialistic in the sense that I don’t need a lot of material possessions, my house is tiny, my car is
old, my bank account gets to zero more often than most people’s, and I just canceled my credit card! Though I am very
guided by the material. I believe most humans are. The physical aspect of things. Our mundane existence.
The palpable and visible truths. I love working with natural materials – clay, fiber, wood, rocks, chocolate, herbs. I
like man made materials too, like glass, cement or plastic – but ultimately even man made materials were extracted
from the earth at some point. I love how I can immerse myself in the temperament of the material and work it
together to transform, both myself and the object – matter over matter. Also, I don’t ignore the non-material aspects of life – such as thoughts, feelings and the ethereal presence of the spirit. To me it is all part of the process, and part of the All, just as I am.
It must have been a challenging process to leave the life you built in New York City and move to a farm in
Northern California. What sparked your initial desire to radically change the way you lived?
The noise! NYC was always liberating, and I feel a big sense of community there. The constant buzz really started
affecting me, though. There is a high energy vibration in NY, it is ever present and you can almost catch it in your
hands. I’m not talking about some metaphysical hippy vibes, I’m talking about the traffic, car alarms, sirens, smoke,
steam, air conditioners, the wind blasting down on Broadway, the subway making the ground shake… It got to a
point where I couldn’t stand the sound of a truck backing up, so I had to go! Consumerism, savage capitalism and
detachment also started bugging me. I wanted to be closer to my food and water source. I wanted to take more
responsibility for my needs, and for what I created and consumed. I also wanted to work with plants more.
More specifically, what brought you to Natural Building?
My husband, Matt Anderson, made a documentary called Fall & Winter about society fast forwarding itself into
oblivion, and one of the people interviewed was Ianto Evans, an amazing Welsh elder who brought cob, an ancient
building technique from the British Isles, to the USA. Cob is basically a sculpting mix of clay, sand, straw and water.
Ianto, together with his wife Linda Smiley and their friend Michael G. Smith started Cob Cottage Company, a
building troupe of sorts, and taught thousands of people from all around the world how to build with natural and
locally available materials. We spent some time there while Matt was editing the film, and after the film came out we spent a whole summer at CCC tending to their garden while Linda and Ianto were away. Afterwards we took one weekend workshop
there, and decided we wanted to build a dwelling together.
In 2015 Matt was invited to shoot a movie about the 25th anniversary of the Natural Building Colloquium, a
gathering of masterminds and builders of a better world. We spent a week in a ghost town in New Mexico with
400+ people, who were natural builders but also educators, engineers, authors, policy makers. We got closer to
Michael G. Smith, an accomplished builder and one of the most renowned authors on building with Earth, and he
offered to teach us how to build our house.
How did you find the land to build your house? The ranch you currently live on has a community of people that were actually an organized commune. What did the two of you have to do to get approval to be a part of their community?
It was very synergistical. They found us as we found them. Also for Fall & Winter Matt interviewed John Jeavons, author of “How to Grow More Vegetables”, and director of Ecology Action of the Mid-Peninsula, a non-profit dedicated to teaching people how to grow the most amount of soil and food using the least amount of land and resources possible. Ecology Action had a demonstration garden here at the ranch where we live now. After spending time in
Oregon at Cob Cottage, we started spending some time at Ecology Action, and became friends with the community at Ridgewood Ranch, so in 2015 we wrote a proposal that we wanted to bring Natural Building to the community, as a way to introduce more ecological ways of building, and host a series of workshops. They approved our proposal, and later that year we started designing the house and the workshops with Michael. We called our workshop series Wall to Wall.
Tell us about the structure you built- the house you live in…
Our house is mostly made of natural materials. Mostly because we also used pvc pipes, a little bit of cement, the metal roof and the basalt insulation, which are all industrially made and store bought. It is a hybrid of many different building techniques. The trusses were repurposed from a dismantled chicken coop, and they determined the design, which is a pole barn. The wood beams were milled from trees that burned in a forest fire. The foundation is made of rice bags filled with lava rock, and it allows for seismic activity. The walls are made of different combinations of clay, straw, rock, and wood: straw-bale, cob, light straw clay, slip & chip, and cordwood. We held 5 different workshops, where people could choose the techniques they wanted to learn, from the foundation, to the wall systems to plasters and finishes. The earthen floor is sealed with linseed (flax) oil. We harvested the clay and most of the wood ourselves, from this land. The straw bales, sand and rocks were all purchased locally. The wood chips were disposal material from the forest service. All our doors and windows came from a local architectural salvage on the coast. The wood burning stove was hauled up a mountain and refurbished. It was all that remained from a cabin fire at Ecology Action, where we lived before. We started preparing the site in April 2016, clearing out blackberries, leveling the ground, sorting and milling the wood, and all that. Our first workshop was at the end of May, and they ran until early July. Michael was the main instructor, and he would come on the weekends. Amanda Fischer was the supporting instructor, and she stayed here for about 3 months making sure we knew what we were doing! It was a production to promote, sign people up, figure out food, camping, lodging, bathrooms, showers, curriculum, and all of that, but it was really fun.
Altogether we had about 30 people enrolled in our workshops, but a lot more people came to learn and help, most of them became great friends! We hosted many work parties, had apprentices from all over the world, and a lot of people from the community helped too. There were at least 100 people somewhat involved with building our house. It was a multidimensional, intergenerational and multicultural community building process! On December 2nd, 2016 we started sleeping in our house.
What were the biggest challenges you faced during construction, both physically and mentally?
Well, I happened to be pregnant, which made everything more challenging, both physically and psychologically. Because of that I became more responsible for the workshop logistics, and Matt for the construction. I think the biggest challenge for me was the stress and discomfort of living in a RV for the entire length of the pregnancy, and running against the clock to have the home birth I wanted. I gave birth in the house 2 weeks after we started sleeping in it. At the time the floor wasn’t finished, and we didn’t have a kitchen!
What do you find are the biggest rewards? What do you love most about the house?
I love that in the process we learned how to build community. For me that was the most valuable lesson of all. Stacking bales is something you can read books about, take a class, watch videos and learn. Community building and connecting with people must be learned from experience. I also love the passive solar design, and how efficient our house is. We barely have to heat it or cool it, the bathwater feeds the landscape and keeps us in a bit of an oasis during the summer, the clay walls help filter the air, which has been crucial in the last few years during fire season.
What are your biggest challenges residing in a Living house?
It’s a handmade house, things are a bit funky and it is pretty small. We do most of the maintenance ourselves, and it can be challenging sometimes. The earthen floor is harder to clean than wood or tile for example.
The house is a living structure like nature, how long is it meant to last?
It can last hundreds of years if well maintained. It’s pretty robust! But if we were to take it down, say we ran a tank over it, it would decompose and reincorporate into earth fairly quickly.
That’s a wonderful statement about what we leave behind. What does a normal day entail on the farm?
It really varies with the seasons. Winter is more mellow for the farmers, and that energy ripples through everyone here. Summers are stressful, lots of food to harvest and process, and fires to worry about. A lot of the people here are workaholics. Everyone wakes up and goes to bed early. We have community dinners 3 times a week. On Sundays, a small group of us makes pizzas in the cob oven. One friend makes the dough with flour that another friend grew and milled. The tomato sauce or pesto are all canned from last summer’s harvest. The toppings are mostly from the farm, aside from the cheese because we don’t have dairy cows. There are sheep, cows, sometimes pigs and chickens. There are two big orchards with apples, pears, cherries, and three gardens that grow food for the community and for market. I am mostly responsible for the medicinal and culinary herbs, which I harvest, process and make medicine with. I also help process and preserve food, and do design work, like logos, packaging, and graphic design.
As an artist do you feel that now your life has become your art due to the nature of having to build everything from the Earth and interacting with the world and its materials? What has living more connected to the Earth inspired you to do in your work?
Yes, and I might have always operated in that mode, it just became more evident here. I was always inspired to create based on my own experience – places I lived, people I connected with. Being in a constant state of touch with the environment has been a tremendous step in my personal evolution. Living with this presence, on the land, responsible for my shelter, my water, my food and my relationships has had a profound impact on my work. I feel in every single one of my cells that I am part of the environment. It is me, and I am it, there is no separation. I am nature, all of the time, even if I am driving, or using some high powered appliance. Also becoming a mother has helped me connect with a deeper part of me, which I call the higher self. For years I have been developing a technique for self awareness called POSES (Program of Self-Encounters) based on observing yourself and awakening your senses in front of a mirror. There are 8 senses recognized in this practice, the 5 we all know about, plus intuition (the 6th sense, gut feeling, insight), proprioception (or kinesthetic sense – of the body moving in space) and interoception (or cenesthesic – the sense of being, an internal felt sense, like feeling hunger, or your heartbeat, or temperature). It is a practice of deep introspection and self-reflection that aligns the physical, mental and emotional and spiritual aspects of the self.
The wild fires in California are a big part of reality for where you live now. What has your experience been with them inside a structure that is inextricably a part of nature?
If it wasn’t for the wood siding (which is also reclaimed, by the way) on the south and the east walls, my house would be a lot more resistant to fire. Burned clay becomes ceramic, and most of my walls would survive a fire. Though the wood poles and beams that hold the roof up would not. In 2017 we had to evacuate in the middle of the night, in pajamas, and for a few days we didn’t know if our place had burned down or not. Thankfully it didn’t. I remember thinking I would miss some of my precious belongings, but we knew how to rebuild the house, and no fire could burn that away from us!
CAPE, CHRISTIAN JOY. DRESS, ICHI from OROBORO.
What do you see for the future of Natural building ? Have you found a larger global community that you are
connected to now that you have made one of these structures?
Natural building is a fantastic way to build, because it puts the residents in charge of their shelter, connects people with one another and the environment where the materials come from, it makes us less oblivious to this idea of eternal extraction of resources. It creates less garbage, repurposes waste materials getting them out of landfills, and also makes healthier structures, free of highly pollutant chemicals, toxic glues, and solvents that off gas and create long term health hazards for all living beings, not just those who live in it. Some of the best people I have met are in the natural building movement. There is no rivalry, they don’t compete to choose if straw bale is better than cob, or this versus that, because they all know that everyone is working together towards planetary health. They are all creative and truly resourceful artists, creating beauty wherever they go, and having a great time while doing it. One of them said to me at the colloquium: “If you are not having fun, how are you gonna get people to join you?”