Support native artisans & rainforest in the Amazon

I loved attending two workshops that CACE organized last month for top-level artisans from the Marañon River to teach fellow artisans from the Tahuayo and Ampiyacu River how to weave bird ornaments with chambira palm fiber. In the first workshop, brothers Kleiber and Jamner from the village of San Francisco spent two days teaching 24 artisans from Chino how to make the channel-billed toucan, tropical screech owl, purple gallinule and wire-tailed manakin. The group included men and women from sixteen to sixty years old. I had been buying bird ornaments from Marañon artisans for two years, but this was the first time that I and artisans from these other regions saw how they were made from scratch.

Surrounded a dozen eager artisans in one half of the artisan meeting house, Kleiber asked everyone in his group to first form a ball with chambira by wrapping a strand around and around its center until it reached the size of a large cherry to form the core of the body. They next formed a second smaller ball for the head, connected the two with a three-inch long piece of wire and then wrapped fiber around this to form the neck.  In the following hours, they progressively attached other bits of wire which they wrapped with different colors of fiber to form the wings, tail, beak, legs and feet. As the first day came to a close, everyone in Kleiber’s group had a bird that resembled a toucan while the members of Jamner’s group each produced an owl. We placed all of the ornaments on a bench and asked the group to point out features that they thought were well made and which ones could be improved. The details and expression of one of the artisan’s toucan were even better than the one made by her teacher. Norma said, “I’ve seen this bird in the forest around here all my life, but now I know I can bring it to life for others through my art.”

Kleiber told me, “It was incredible to me to see how fast these artisans learned how to make this complicated bird. I really appreciate how seriously they got involved with this process. It’s harder to get people from my village to focus on this kind of thing for this long.”

Romelia and her husband Jorge both learned how to make an owl and gallinule from Jamner. Jorge said, “I’ve been a carver for years and can weave a basic chambira bag, but I never thought I could make a little bird as beautiful as this.” Estelita who is the president of the Chino artisan association called Manos Amazonicas (“Amazon hands”) said, “This workshop was valuable for all of us. We can now design and make new kinds of crafts to sell to CACE and tourists. I know these visitors will want to buy crafts representing some of the birds they can see in our forest and by our river. This workshop also attracted new people who haven’t been part of our association before. It would be great to increase our group with more dedicated artisans.”

Two weeks later, we convened another skill-sharing workshop in Puca Urquillo – the dual Bora and Huitoto village near the town of Pebas on the Ampiyacu River. We recruited Pablo, another artisan from San Francisco to join Kleiber and Jamner as teachers since we had invited artisans from all of our partner villages in the region. About 40 artisans joined us for breakfast, and this number swelled to 66 as people arrived from more distant villages. Our artisan teachers had their hands full so many participants so we scaled-back the pace and had each one teach the 20-23 people in their group how to make one bird well in two-days. The featured birds were the Amazon kingfisher, lineated woodpecker and rufescent tiger heron. There was a lot of energy in the “locale” (community meeting room) as dogs and wandered around and participants swapped bits of chambira of different colors, but they soon settled into a focused flow of watching their teacher demonstrate each step in the process, try it themselves and then refine it with feedback from their teacher. Some artisan moms breastfed their babies while they weaved, but kids who were three years or older played non-stop on the stage or ran around outside.

This was the first time that these artisans had made a bird, and they were not making easy models. The tiger heron (which they called the “puma garza” – mountain lion egret) required sewing multi-colored loops onto the chest and then carefully cutting them to resemble the bird’s ruffled feathers. The woodpecker had a bright red crest on its head (like Woody Woodpecker) which needed shaping and combing to look just right.   Kori said, “I feel like I’m learning to be a hair-stylist for birds.”

As Tulio interviewed artisans outside the workshop, most offered two similar comments. The first was that it was hard at first to make their bird, but the teachers explained the process well and they were confident they would get better with practice. The second was that they all wanted to have another workshop to learn how to make different types of birds. Maria Elena said with a smile, “I’m proud of the kingfisher I made; now I want to learn how to make a macaw.”

A week later, I had a farewell dinner with Kleiber and Jamner at a restaurant in Nauta where we discussed workshop highlights and ways they could engage their student artisans even better. They were excited about teaching more workshops and wanted to keep making new models of birds themselves. They were anxious to try and raise their bird craft-making another level by making more birds in flight so I gave them a dozen photos of various species with their wings out. The day before I left Iquitos for home, I received a box with new prototypes made by the pair in the past ten days. I was astounded by the life-like shape, colors and fine touches on their flying hoatzin, roseate spoonbill, purple gallinule and black-collared hawk. It’s great to know that we can support a few top artisans to keep pushing the boundaries of their creativity while enlisting their support to welcome other artisans to this journey of weaving beautiful birds of the Amazon.

Links:

• CACE website
• CACE online Amazon Forest Store
• CACE blog