Espedito Seleiro: tradição e ofício de um artesão cearense

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the craft and the creative process of Espedito Seleiro craftsman. From a historical overview of the northeastern occupation processes of Brazil (Bastide, 1964; Albuquerque Júnior, 2006), from sugarcane to livestock, it became the contextualization “vaqueira” tradition in the state of Ceará and its relationship with the handicraft culture (Cascudo, 1971; Sylvia Porto Alegre, 1994). It was observed the professional trajectory of Espedito Seleiro in the city of Nova Olinda, Ceará, compared with the old craft guilds of the Middle Ages (Santoni Rugiu, 1998; Bardi, 1994). Investigated the creative artisan process, with reference to the aesthetics of the cangaço (Pernambucano de Mello, 2010), in dialogue with some concepts of Semiotics of Culture, such as memory, tradition, translation and border (Lotman, 1996; Ferreira, 2003 Machado, 2003). A lso noted was the appearance of the design in artisan work (Cardoso, 2012) and the use of hands as an essential tool to gesture to make, that reconfigures man's place in nature (Flusser, 1994). As methodology, fieldwork from trips to Nova Olinda during the year 2015 was a methodological tool coupled with readings in the fields of Sociology, Communication and Semiotics of Culture. Being a theme that provokes more questions than answers gives us, we can say that Espedito Seleiro is an artist who is laying on the border between tradition and contemporaneity, updating and translating the craft creative doing.