Over the course of my 2-week residency at Anima Casa Rural, I ended up creating 20 paper collages inspired by all the different birds I identified throughout Jalisco. I was limited with time, but I luckily had a good amount of days where I just relaxed and observed, days where I was in the studio for a good chunk of the day and cut paper with my tiny scissors, as well as exciting days where we ventured out to a different town or city. No matter what though, I went outside every single day. I felt lucky to have such easy access to nature, so many animals, and birds right outside of my front door. I think it helped with my mental health so much.
A little snippet of my day to day:
Aside from the farm itself, my hosts also took me to several places including the neighboring town of San Isidro, a small unincorporated town whose name evades me, Ajijic which is home to the 2nd largest lake in Mexico, Ahuisculco which is right next to a part of the La Primavera forest, Rio Caliente which is an area with a naturally hot river, and Ribera del Lago which is a recovering lake now filled with lots of different waterfowl and fish.
I think I identified almost 50 different species of birds. Should I list them all? Just kidding. But I will list the 20 species that inspired the collages I made:
What was my plan with all my collages, you ask? I wanted to make a zine with everything and ended up designing a trifold pamphlet field guide, similar to the ones you see some birders might carry around as an alternative to a digital field guide or a heavy book field guide. I’ve still yet to print them out as I’ll be leaving for another trip later this week, but I’m also planning to print out a booklet version. I’ll be selling both in a zine fest or two I’m hoping to be a part of later this year, but there’s a good possibility I’ll also be listing them up on my website shop soon.
Starting today, I’ll be posting each bird collage for the next couple of weeks on my Instagram page if anyone is interested!
Lastly, I wanted to share this collage I worked on yesterday. I’ll be selling stickers of the Palestine Sunbird and will be donating all the proceeds to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund as well as eSims for Gaza. More info on my Instagram page in the coming weeks!