Airport sculptress

She’s used to it now. She goes from being anonymous to the centre of attention as soon people discover she’s the artist who created those roughly-hewn sculptures on the Algarve’s most international of roundabouts.

“Only a little while ago, I was at the opening of a gallery, and when I told them that I was the one who made the sculptures at Faro airport, everyone went crazy!” She smiles.

Teresa Paulino won the competition for ideas for the feature as a design course student at the University of the Algarve back in 1988.

At the time “I never thought I would be chosen! It was a real surprise when the director of the airport called me”, she recalls.

“The Observers” comprise 12 figures in all. They’ve been there since January 2001, but people still dodge traffic on the roundabout to cross over and get a closer look.

“Yes, and a lot of people go into the airport to ask who did the sculptures,” she adds. “Then they get in touch with me. I love that!”

“They’re almost always foreigners”, she explains. “Portuguese don’t bother, or they don’t seem to notice the pieces at all!”

“I’ve already done another similar sculpture in a private garden near Lagos”. An Englishman liked the figures so much that he wanted “the figure of a man and a child” in the same rudimentary style.

Once she was awarded the airport project, “I hunted up and down the Algarve to see if there was a workshop equipped” for working with limestone and making pieces up to 3 metres high.

“Everyone told me it was impossible. I asked Bota Filipe, of the centre for contemporary art in Almancil (ZEFA), who was of the opinion that the project was unworkable due to the dimensions. And he told me the sculptures should all be the same size, a bit like lead soldiers!” She laughs.

As we now know, Teresa Paulino took no notice of the proffered advice and set to work bringing life to her stones in some workshops in Vila Viçosa. Her husband Pedro Félix, also connected to the arts, helped her. Forty years old and a mother-of-three, Teresa Paulino was a long-distance swimmer in her youth, and competed in a number of ocean swims.

But “The Observers” isn’t her only piece of public in the Algarve. It’s perhaps the best received… Recently, in 2009, she did “Os Músicos do Coreto”, a set of seven pieces that stand in the main avenue in Loulé.

They have some “rounded” finishes – as ordered by the Mayor – which resulted in a certain degree of criticism. A local blogger considered the work “a joke, showing total disrespect for music and orchestras”, and he added that the piece stood as “testimony to the lack of vision of local politicians and their inability to generate socially useful works of art”. A bit harsh?

The truth is that whenever things don’t turn out right, the artist is always the one to get the blame. The real causes of problems are successive hold-ups, cuts in budgets and last-minute changes.

A perfect example of this is the Faro sculpture commemorating soldiers of the colonial war, inaugurated in September 2009. “I think it’s much too small”. In other words, “it corresponds to the size of the budget” – and, to make matters even more complicated, the commission was “held up” for two years. “I met all the presidents of the league of soldiers” as they changed throughout the process...

There are even more bizarre stories.

In 2008, “I was asked to make a figure in bronze to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the band in Paderne”. The trouble started just a few days before the “public presentation”.

“When it comes to the placing of sculptures, borough councils simply don’t have the expertise required. They always ask me if I “know anyone” who could do it instead of them. “Either that or when they do have the manpower, the whole process takes much longer than it should”. The artist has learnt that it is always better to “organise some friends” to work logistically.

“But remember that the inauguration of that Loulé bronze was in May of 2009. The only thing the town council had to do was place a few projectors… well, they’re still there today!” She smiles.

Paulino has her small workshop at Fonte Santa, in the borough of Loulé. She has taught in the past and still occasionally gives art workshops for children, but these days she lives exclusively from commission work – either private, municipal or from companies. This involves her making sketches, scale drawings, maquettes and many hours of planning.

“In Oporto, a shopping centre presented me with a commission that involved a lot of pieces” but it eventually had to be shelved due to lack of money. “That’s a frustration. Sometimes, clients don’t even want to pay for the preparatory work. I invest time and energy thinking and developing an idea - but they don’t seem to take that on board”.

So, how does one react? “I am getting used to it”, she shrugs. “But it’s not easy”. The daughter of Algarvian parents (her mother was born in Olhão, her father in Faro), Teresa Paulino attended the famous arts college of António Arroio, and later took a course in sewing fabrics for industry. “Since I was a child, I’ve been making things: dolls, clothes, bags, dressmaking and crochet (which I learnt from my grandmother)”.

She’s one of the rare examples of artists that have returned to their origins. “I came back because I didn’t like living in Lisbon”, she confesses.

Whenever she can, Paulino submits ideas for commission tenders throughout the country. At the «1ª ArteMar do Estoril» event in 2009 she won second place with her «Red Fish», a sculpture made of fibreglass and resin, with scales made of fabric, created from refuse washed up from the sea.

Last year she entered the competition once again, with a gigantic tin of sardines, and won the online jury prize of €5.000. Right now she has a new, radical public art commission – for a fibreglass sculpture for her local council - but it’s also been put on hold. “It’s fun because it’s designed to go on an old building.

It’s something different – some figures, human-like, that can be seen going through one wall and coming out of another. There’s also a pig – the front part and the back”.

It would be iconic as its siting is right where one of the annual Festival Med stages is mounted. “But, sadly, right now, there are no funds available”, she laments.

One day, if she has the means she “like to make large pieces to dot around the country, in the middle of nowhere. I thought of this because there’s nothing like that here”.

It’s an idea a little like the huge bulls you see, here and there, as you drive along the motorways through Andalusia.