Atin Ito First Filipino Community Newspaper in Ontario
Cynthia Bauzon-Arre grew-up in a home surrounded by mother nature. Little did she know that her exposure to the environment would play a huge role in the career and advocacy she would take later in life.
Cynthia is an illustrator and graphic designer since 2018. She has been creating art that focuses on raising awareness on the importance of native trees in forest conservation.
We had a very interesting chat with her online and here is that conversation.
Were you already exposed to design and the love for nature in your formative years?
Our family home in Quezon City is surrounded by trees and plants so nature was a fixture in my childhood years. I remember eating kaimito, mangoes, aratiles, and duhat that grew on our trees, pulling out santan filaments and sipping the sweet nectar, and weaving little palm leaf balls to use as “pato” for a game of sipa.
Our old home also had a built-in bird shelter and it delighted me to see nests taking shape inside it during the rainy season. My dad is from Pangasinan and my mom from Pampanga so growing up, my brothers and I were exposed to their respective regional cultures.
As a shy and introverted child, I found solace in my sketchbooks and crayons. I would draw everything that fascinated me-trees, mountains and lakes, animals, and later on, people. Drawing every day, I developed my skills and, to further hone them, I attended a summer vacation-long art workshop in my teens. I could say that I found my voice through art, which led me to take up Visual Communication in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines.
What made you decide to concentrate on awareness in preserving Mother Nature?
After graduating, I worked in advertising as an art director for nine years and hardly had time to draw anymore since work was purely done on a computer. On the side, I would design album covers — this was during the mid to late ’90s when the elaborately packaged CD’s and cassette tapes were commonplace. Some years later, digital music happened. At this time I was already self-employed and suddenly there were no albums to design.
One day, I happened to see my old sketchbooks, and leafing through them reminded me of how much I used to enjoy painting by hand. Seeing my graphic novelist husband Arnold drawing every day inspired me even more to get back into illustrating.
My skills had gotten rusty because I’ve been using a computer for years so I tried to re-learn the basic and documented my progress online. The themes of my initial artworks revolved around pop culture and the music scene which represented my design toots. Eventually, driven by nostalgia and circumstance, I began turning to nature for inspiration.
While researching birds and plants that I was familiar with growing up, I learned about native species and their ecological importance. My dad is a historian and he has always emphasized the importance of learning about and preserving Filipino heritage, so knowing that some of our beautiful indigenous flora and fauna were in danger of extinction had an impact on me. Apart from the catastrophic implications on our ecosystem, I likened it to losing some of our national cultural identity, in a way.
I started drawing endangered birds and plants and then posted about their plight on social media. These drawings caught the attention of Forest Foundation Philippines who invited me to collaborate with them in promoting awareness of the importance of protecting our forests. That was over five years ago, and the many meaningful projects we did together all this time has taught me several valuable lessons that allowed me to go deeper in my conservation journey.
Since then I’ve gotten to work with other environmental organizations such as EDC (Energy Development Corporation) whose Binhi program’s activities are also geared towards native species preservation and propagation. I also try to integrate the advocacy in other projects I’m commissioned for, such as t-shirt design for Uniqlo, a gift box for Sekaya, and tableware for Casa Juan Manila.
Looking back, did you achieve the goals you set for yourself? What do you still want to accomplish?
When I was younger, my mission was simply to find happiness and creative fulfillment in the work that I do and I believe I’ve met this goal a hundred times over.
Now that I’m older, I’m more discerning about how to use my time and I try to make every output matter. I’m also inspired by my parents who do public service through their respective professions in their senior years. If I can keep producing artworks that will inform, educate and hopefully inspire others to help care for our forests — the communities that live within them, the bodies of land and water, our native flora and fauna, and ultimately, our environment as a whole — then that would be amazing.
— Irene de Jesus Obligacion
To learn more about Cynthia’s advocacy and to check out her products, visit cynthiabauzonarre.com.
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Credit belongs to : www.manilatimes.net
