When Carolina Saenz, co-owner of La Trenza Tacos, and Lisa Franklin, owner of Forest and Folk, came together for their Culture Days “Birds of Diversity” project earlier this year, neither one of them expected to win an Ontario Culture Days Spotlight Award for Best Collaborative Program.
Although the two Wincey Mills vendors have known each other for a little over a year and half now, this was the first time the two set out to work together in an artistic capacity.
Inspired by Manuel Molina, an artist from Oaxaca, Mexico, and a family friend of Saenz’, the two set out to adapt his “Birds Without Paradise” initiative to highlight the diversity that exists in the County of Brant.
“Manuel would create hundreds of birds and get the community to paint them as a way to educate the public about the importance of freedom for birds who are kept in cages as pets, ” said Saenz. “He did that in several cities in Mexico, the main one was in Oaxaca which is where I am from. He’s a very good friend of my family’s so I knew about his project, and a couple years ago I had actually told him that I really wanted to bring something like his art exhibit to Paris.”
She said that when she heard about this year’s Culture Days, she thought it might be a good opportunity to get the community involved and bring something like Molina’s project to Paris but with a twist. Something that would ultimately reflect the diversity and culture in the County of Brant.
“I’ve been in Paris now for around three and half years and even during this short period of time, I’ve really noticed how much the community and the diversity in the area has grown,” explained Saenz. “I think sometimes there’s some negativity around the development that’s happening here, and so we wanted to really just look at the beauty that that development creates. With more diversity comes different people, different traditions, different cultures and food, and more opportunities to celebrate all of that.”
Having communicated with Franklin about her wish to adapt Molina’s project before, the two decided to apply and see what happened next, said Saenz.
“We had started out sort of aiming for a smaller amount of birds just for Wincey Mills but I think we can both agree we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into,” laughed Franklin. “Eventually, we were having a conversation with the County and they mentioned they were looking for a way to guide people through the downtown area and so we told them about the birds and it kind of snowballed from there.”
Wanting to do the project justice, Saenz and Franklin agreed that they would have to learn how to build the birds from the best.
“Manuel came from Oaxaca in August and gave us a bit of a run through of what he does. We sort of took that and then made it work with local reclaimed materials that were available here,” said Saenz. “The process is very long; we used cardboard from watermelon boxes to cut out the bird and then we would use a mix of sawdust, glue, flour and water for the head and the belly.”
Saenz explained that in the end they ended up with birds of two different sizes and between 115 and 125 in total.
“The feathers on the smaller ones were created with craft paper and then with the bigger ones, the feathers were cut out of corn husks,” she said. “That’s part of Manuel’s original project but in Mexico it’s a different type of corn so when we tried to use the local corn here, we found it wasn’t as malleable and it was getting too dry. We had to get creative and so we ended up actually finding that the leaves I use to make tamales worked out the best.”
With the body of the birds finished, the two artists held community workshops and invited local residents to paint them in a way that represented who they were.
Franklin said that getting to see that diversity reflected through their project was fun and inspiring.
“We were pleasantly surprised with the engagement and it was neat to see how much joy it would bring,” she said. “We had a lot of locals of all ages who would pop by the workshops while they were shopping around town and such, and we also had around 40 children come to our pop up at Lions Park. It was just fun and inspiring to see how it brought people together.”
After working diligently from August to the end of September, the two agreed that all their hard work was well worth it in the end.
“We loved seeing everyone checking out the birds as they passed by and checking them out,” said Franklin. “You know, arts and culture can often be deemed as ‘frivolous’ or ‘not necessary,’ but when you think about it and you get to see the joy that it brings to people, you can understand how important it is to have access to that.”
While the project may have been initiated as a way to bring the community together as a whole, Saenz and Franklin said that it also strengthened their own friendship.
“It was one of these things that ended up being like a labour of love,” said Franklin. “We’re both running our own businesses, Craolina has young kids and we both had all these things on the go so I think we really leaned on each other.”
“Whenever I had that moment of panic and I felt like we weren’t going to pull it off, Lisa would remind me, ‘we’re fine, we can do this and we’re doing good,’” added Saenz. “In those moments I knew I could believe her because we had each other’s backs.”
Speaking about winning their award, Saenz said that they didn’t even know there were any, but that it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless.
“We had no idea there were awards at all, we just did this because we wanted to work together on a project that we enjoyed, to see the beauty of it and just how people enjoyed it with us,” said Saenz. “We really weren’t expecting anything out of it but it was nice to be recognized for something that people enjoyed.”
Overall, the two said that while they’re unsure if they will replicate the project next year, and if so, on what scale, they’re incredibly thankful for everyone’s support this year.
“Thank you to the community for helping us and being so excited about everything,” said Franklin. “Despite the long process and all the trial and errors, I think it was that shared excitement that really kept us going.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
