Artist Francis Upritchard was in Brazil on an artist's residency in 2004 when she came across a wonderful local artist Darlindo José de Oliveira Pinto who created small magical, colourful sculptures of Amazonian snakes, fish and mythological creatures. What particularly caught her attention however, was the intriguing tactile material they were made from: wild balata rubber. Intrigued, she asked about its source.
Every two years Pinto would lead a small extraction team that would canoe and hike for weeks deep into the Amazon rainforest where he had a permit to alternately milk two of four rare rubber trees. Shimmying up the tall trunks, the men would cut a ‘V’ shape into the bark from which the latex dripped down into a sack on the ground. Immersed in
