Set Design by Jan Brown Checco Working with Chinese designers taught us the importance of curb appeal! The focus of the façade with the frame of the huge Electric Butterfly (designed and fabricated by Gerald Checco and Carl Sandlin in the 1990’s) is the annual base line. This show’s focus on Carnaval brought the spirit of the Samba Queen and balao lanterns as signature pieces. The pavement was painted to recall the Burle Marx patterns on the Copacabana beachwalks.
The Samba Queen was carved from laminated sheets of insulation foam, painted with acrylic paint and studded with flowers made from recycled bottles.
The LED lights on the Electric Butterfly frame show through the painted shade cloth covers of the wings at night.
Jan devised a process for turning recycled water and soda bottles into fanciful flowers that were attached to strands of LED lights and suspended from the party tent ceiling. This creativity with “trash that is not trash” came from studying the art and craft movement in the favelas of Rio and Sao Paulo. Directions on how to make Bottle Flowers can be found at the Butterfly Show website archive.
One bottle art chandelier hanging in the party tent, approximately 8’ tall by 3’ wide. Directions on how to make Bottle Flowers can be found at the Butterfly Show website archive.
The exit from the main showroom that houses the free flying butterflies leads into the Sambadrome, an experience in sound and light that gives visitors a taste of being in Rio’s Sambadrome at Carnaval time.
Inside the Sambadrome vestibule which helps with butterfly containment is a slide show of Brazilian Carnaval photos, samba processional music and a dance floor. The murals were painted by the volunteers who help to build the show sets each year
The spectacular Iguazu Falls create the west end focal point of the Main Showroom and the cascade provides butterflies with necessary water and humidity. Stacie Martin, Cincinnati Parks horticultural master, created the planting plan.
Photos by Brett Sutton and a soccer theme decorated the Education Room where demonstrations of bottle art crafting kept good company with color, make-and-take activities on weekdays. On weekends a more expanded craft program is offered to the audience, organized by Brie Hiudt.
Recycled Bottle Flowers – Method by Jan Brown Checco Directions on how to make Bottle Flowers can be found at the Butterfly Show website archive.
The larger LED lights are on a changing color program which makes a very nice animation and color transformation to the whole.
The larger LED lights are on a changing color program which makes a very nice animation and color transformation to the whole.
The bottoms of bottles make great star shaped “sequins” for our Samba Queen figure.
Candomble Deities and Brazilian Folklore Characters by Jan Brown Checco Following the style of Roberto Burle Marx, Jan created two companion panels for the Main Showroom: this is Samba Queen.
Following the style of Roberto Burle Marx, Jan created two companion panels for the Main Showroom: this is Momo King.
Candomble Deities by Jan Brown Checco Ọxum reigns over love, intimacy, beauty, wealth and diplomacy. Orisha of love, maternity and marriage, she has been syncretized with Our Lady of Charity. She is associated with the color yellow, gold, peacock feathers, mirrors, honey and anything of beauty. Associated with rivers, she is beneficent, generous and very kind. She does, however, have a horrific temper, one which she seldom ever loses but which causes untold destruction whenever she does. Oxum is how the Yorubans understand the cosmological forces of water, moisture, and attraction. Therefore, she is believed to be omnipresent and omnipotent.
Candomble Deities by Jan Brown Checco Oxala is the oldest “Orixa white deity”, referring to spiritual purity and pure light, both physically and symbolically as in the “light” of consciousness. According to mythical stories Oxala is the eldest of all orisha and was granted authority to create the earth. He lives on the top of a mountain, and is the creator of people. The kindness that emminates from this Orixa is almost overwhelming. He is sometimes called to calm an angry or dangerous Orixa, and all of the Orixa will defer to him.
Candomble Deities by Jan Brown Checco Yemanja is an orisha brought along to the western hemisphere with a host of other deities/energy forces in nature when Africans were transported as captives. She is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a protector of children. A mother goddess; patron deity of women, especially pregnant women, the patron deity of the fishermen and the survivors of shipwrecks, the feminine principle of creation and the spirit of moonlight. Small offerings of flowers and floating candles are left in the sea on many nights at Copacabana.
Candomble by Jan Brown Checco Oxossi is a hunter, and his role as an often solitary figure in the wilderness lends him another role as a shaman. He is also connected with all hunter communities, depicted as a friend or ally of the nature spirits of the forests of Brazil. Oxossi is the patron of justice and the hunt.. Believers come to him in search of other things, a job or house for example. He is the patron of those who work with animals, dogs in particular, and is quite often supplicated when a wrong is done to an animal without cause.