A Visit to the Livraria Cultura in downtown São Paulo

About three weeks ago, Carlie and I visited the Livraria Cultural, a wonderful bookstore in downtown São Paulo, where one can find a large selection of books in English, as well as in several other languages. The bookstore is located on several floors of a large office building, which also houses many other small retail businesses on Avenida Paulista in the center of the city.

Directly in front of the entrance of the bookstore stands a most interesting artistic creation, celebrating four hundred years since the first publication of Don Quixote, the famous novel written by Migual de Cervantes Saavedra. The following pictures reveal the creative genius of a team of artists, including Silvio Galvão and Sandro Rodrigues, responsible for its creation. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

The following photo is of Carlie standing in front of Sancho Panza. This particular "plastic' creation is made of recycled junk, including 4,000 beer bottle caps, bicycle inner tubes, paper and leftover polystyrene plastic scraps.

Don Quixote's horse is made of all kinds of interesting scraps, including 200 meters of scrap iron, 150 quilos of plastic parts, brushes, combs, mannequin limbs, brooms, eyeglasses, clock pieces, hats, a hubcap, computer keys, a guitar neck and strings, a toilet flush, a filter, a lantern,  toys, a toothbrush,
a medallion, an iron, etc.  See if you can find any other interesting items!

 Finally, Don Quixote's materials include 2,000 coca-cola cans, more 2,000 pop top tabs, 30 quilos of paper and leftover polystyrene scraps.

It's amazing how creative the human mind can be!

It's also inspiring for  Carlie, who loves to work with different media and can create something beautiful out of something that I usually think needs to go into the trash!