Adriana de Barros
Encyclopedia
Adriana Aleixo Pereira de Barros (born 1976) is a Portuguese
and Canadian illustrator
, web designer, and poet
.
Since 1999, de Barros has created visual poems that combine various disciplines: writing
, design
ing and drawing
, sound editing, and filmmaking
(through the use of new media
, Flash
software). Her visual poems have been screened at the American
festivals Flashbang! and Flashbang 4 (2001 and 2002), The. ME.Project. (2002; showcased in Toronto
, New York
and Los Angeles
). Her work has appeared in art/poetry books and websites. De Barros has been recognized for "(...) trying to make poetry more dynamic and accessible." Her creations exist as she states, "so that even someone who may dislike poetry can enjoy it visually."
de Barros designs and illustrates at her own studio, Breathewords. And she is also founder and editor of Scene 360, a not-for-profit, online film and arts magazine; since 2000, it has provided numerous insightful interviews and profiles of leading web designers, artist
s, and filmmakers.
, Portugal
, de Barros moved to Toronto at the age of three. As a child she was mainly interested in sports; and only when she was twelve did she realize her interest in drawing. At age fifteen, her family decided to move back to her birthplace, where de Barros faced cultural challenges with her education
and lifestyle.
In high school, she choose to study art and design, deciding to pursue cinema in college. Upset with the lack of sophistication within the film school
s and film industry in Portugal, she believes that Toronto "would have been a better location to pursue cinema than in Portugal." She wishes to one day have the opportunity to study filmmaking in North America
. Out of high school, she began working temporarily for her family's clothing
business. The experience led to a full time job as a fashion
and advertising designer for the company, as well as co-running a copy center with design section.
In 1999, de Barros began web design and programming. She mentions finally finding her place online by "combining various art forms into each project”. The Internet providing non-geographical boundaries and easiness for de Barros to write and create English language projects. She began with exploration in frame-by-frame Flash visual
poems to founding an online film and arts magazine, Scene 360, where she would write film and art analyses and profile creative individuals.
Not having a formal degree, de Barros is self taught
. Today, she still runs her copy center, as she designs in her studio. She is principal and creative director of Breathewords.com. Her work encompasses various media from hand-painted illustrative magazine covers to e-commerce and wacky Flash sites for poets (e.g. HotEmuluv).
s and poems have been showcased at design and Flash festivals, and screened on the Internet on places like poemsthatgo ("Winter City Sleeps" and "Blinding Lights", 2001), top design portal K10k ("Freedom of Expression in the Copyright Era" premiered in Issue #131, 2004), and online art gallery Lumen Eclipse ("Invisible"; featured in 2007).
analysis and colour
, and imaginary and surrealist
envisionment. (...)" She likes to paint portraits of people with distinguishing facial expressions. And objects commonly found in her artwork are... hands, angel wings, butterflies, and animals.
de Barros's prominent style is "(...) intentionally leaves portions of her pieces unfinished or with imperfections." She has a duo passion of old era with contemporary living. From inspirations of the Golden Age of Cinema to Renaissance
(e.g. unfinished sketches
by Leonardo da Vinci). This combined with a Pop Art
impression —her paintings of kids in animal masks, Disney characters; and tattoo-styled outlines with bold color backgrounds. Her creative process is noted for its clear difference from a fine artist and cartoon animator, because it many times begins with writing—inspired by a theme, song, daily life interpretation—and then composed into a visual.
De Barros's painting technique is acrylic only to using mixed media
with watercolor, color pencils, spray paint, and collage
.
and static media (CSS
and HTML
) have been featured with design excellence in "HOW’s Top Ten Links (2003, USA), Web Designing (April 2003, Japan), Tashen
’s 1000 Favorite Websites (2003, Germany), STEP Inside Design (Issue May/June 2004, USA)
. She has won a Portuguese Multimedia II Award (2005), two SXSW Web Awards nominations (2003 and 2004) a nomination in the 17th Stuttgart Filmwinter New Media Award (2004).". American Institute of Graphic Arts's (AIGA
, Cincinnati) has noted her work with a Top Design Site Award, MSN.com with
a Site of the Week and Yahoo! a New and Notable mention.
De Barros is also involved in the design industry, having led a speaker/workshop session about the behind-the-scenes work on her visual poems and films at the OFFF04 convention held in Valencia, Spain. She has continued to do lectures about web design
at Universities in Portugal.
Portuguese people
The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....
and Canadian illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
, web designer, and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
.
Since 1999, de Barros has created visual poems that combine various disciplines: writing
Writing
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
, design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
ing and drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
, sound editing, and filmmaking
Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
(through the use of new media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
, Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
software). Her visual poems have been screened at the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
festivals Flashbang! and Flashbang 4 (2001 and 2002), The. ME.Project. (2002; showcased in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
). Her work has appeared in art/poetry books and websites. De Barros has been recognized for "(...) trying to make poetry more dynamic and accessible." Her creations exist as she states, "so that even someone who may dislike poetry can enjoy it visually."
de Barros designs and illustrates at her own studio, Breathewords. And she is also founder and editor of Scene 360, a not-for-profit, online film and arts magazine; since 2000, it has provided numerous insightful interviews and profiles of leading web designers, artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s, and filmmakers.
Biography
Born in Caldas da RainhaCaldas da Rainha
Caldas da Rainha is a city in western central Portugal. The city serves as the seat of the larger municipality of the same name and is the seat of the Comunidade Intermunicipal do Oeste...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, de Barros moved to Toronto at the age of three. As a child she was mainly interested in sports; and only when she was twelve did she realize her interest in drawing. At age fifteen, her family decided to move back to her birthplace, where de Barros faced cultural challenges with her education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
and lifestyle.
In high school, she choose to study art and design, deciding to pursue cinema in college. Upset with the lack of sophistication within the film school
Film school
The term film school is used to describe any educational institution dedicated to teaching aspects of filmmaking, including such subjects as film production, film theory, digital media production, and screenwriting. Film history courses and hands-on technical training are usually incorporated into...
s and film industry in Portugal, she believes that Toronto "would have been a better location to pursue cinema than in Portugal." She wishes to one day have the opportunity to study filmmaking in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. Out of high school, she began working temporarily for her family's clothing
Clothing
Clothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...
business. The experience led to a full time job as a fashion
Fashion
Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...
and advertising designer for the company, as well as co-running a copy center with design section.
In 1999, de Barros began web design and programming. She mentions finally finding her place online by "combining various art forms into each project”. The Internet providing non-geographical boundaries and easiness for de Barros to write and create English language projects. She began with exploration in frame-by-frame Flash visual
Visual poetry
Visual poetry is poetry or art in which the visual arrangement of text, images and symbols is important in conveying the intended effect of the work. It is sometimes referred to as concrete poetry, a term that predates visual poetry, and at one time was synonymous with it.Visual poetry was heavily...
poems to founding an online film and arts magazine, Scene 360, where she would write film and art analyses and profile creative individuals.
Not having a formal degree, de Barros is self taught
Self Taught
Self Taught is a hip-hop group from Vancouver, British Columbia. Its three members, which are all producers/emcees, consists of Cliff Herman, Vintage and Jay Robillard...
. Today, she still runs her copy center, as she designs in her studio. She is principal and creative director of Breathewords.com. Her work encompasses various media from hand-painted illustrative magazine covers to e-commerce and wacky Flash sites for poets (e.g. HotEmuluv).
Visual poetry
de Barros's interactive narrativeNarrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
s and poems have been showcased at design and Flash festivals, and screened on the Internet on places like poemsthatgo ("Winter City Sleeps" and "Blinding Lights", 2001), top design portal K10k ("Freedom of Expression in the Copyright Era" premiered in Issue #131, 2004), and online art gallery Lumen Eclipse ("Invisible"; featured in 2007).
Illustration style and technique
"Her art revolves around issue of daily life, human psychologyPsychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
analysis and colour
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
, and imaginary and surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
envisionment. (...)" She likes to paint portraits of people with distinguishing facial expressions. And objects commonly found in her artwork are... hands, angel wings, butterflies, and animals.
de Barros's prominent style is "(...) intentionally leaves portions of her pieces unfinished or with imperfections." She has a duo passion of old era with contemporary living. From inspirations of the Golden Age of Cinema to Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
(e.g. unfinished sketches
Sketch (drawing)
A sketch is a rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not usually intended as a finished work...
by Leonardo da Vinci). This combined with a Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
impression —her paintings of kids in animal masks, Disney characters; and tattoo-styled outlines with bold color backgrounds. Her creative process is noted for its clear difference from a fine artist and cartoon animator, because it many times begins with writing—inspired by a theme, song, daily life interpretation—and then composed into a visual.
De Barros's painting technique is acrylic only to using mixed media
Mixed media
Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...
with watercolor, color pencils, spray paint, and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
.
Multimedia
De Barros's web designs in both FlashAdobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
and static media (CSS
CSS
-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...
and HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
) have been featured with design excellence in "HOW’s Top Ten Links (2003, USA), Web Designing (April 2003, Japan), Tashen
Taschen
Taschen is an art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. It began as Taschen Comics publishing Benedikt's extensive comic collection...
’s 1000 Favorite Websites (2003, Germany), STEP Inside Design (Issue May/June 2004, USA)
. She has won a Portuguese Multimedia II Award (2005), two SXSW Web Awards nominations (2003 and 2004) a nomination in the 17th Stuttgart Filmwinter New Media Award (2004).". American Institute of Graphic Arts's (AIGA
Aiga
‘Aiga is a word in the Samoan language which means 'family.' The aiga is the family unit of Samoan society and differs from the Western sense in that it consists more than just a mother, father and children. The Samoan family, also referred to as an 'extended family' is based on the culture's...
, Cincinnati) has noted her work with a Top Design Site Award, MSN.com with
a Site of the Week and Yahoo! a New and Notable mention.
De Barros is also involved in the design industry, having led a speaker/workshop session about the behind-the-scenes work on her visual poems and films at the OFFF04 convention held in Valencia, Spain. She has continued to do lectures about web design
Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
at Universities in Portugal.
Interviews
External links
- Breathewords - studio website
- Scene 360 - online film and arts magazine