BY Keith Recker | January 15, 2010

Master Haitian metalsmiths forge an alliance with Brandaid Project to expand markets for the art of Croix des Bouquets

In Croix des Bouquets, metal, fire and muscle come together to make lithe mermaid goddesses, mythic lovers and radiant sunbursts. Because these images often come from Haiti’s syncretic voudou tradition, which blends West African Yoruba religion and French Catholicism, Croix des Bouquet metalwork has earned an important place in Haiti’s cultural milieu. The town’s metalsmiths, who live and work not far from the Haitian capitol of Port-au-Prince, are not only artists, they are entrepreneurs, and cultural and community leaders, too.
 
Some of the best smiths, Serge Jolimeau among them, have joined forces with Brandaid Project in an effort to expand into international markets.  The alliance combines Haitian genius with modern marketing and Hollywood celebrity.  In the year or so since Brandaid launched their Croix des Bouquets program, Vanity Fair magazine has sponsored a March 2009 Oscar-week event in Hollywood and another during New York’s September 2009 Fashion Week, which was hosted by Diane von Furstenberg.  Film stars Josh Brolin, Diane Lane and Maria Bello have attended parties to talk to the press – in addition to traveling to Haiti to experience the country and its art firsthand. And Croix des Bouquets sculptures are offered for sale on Brandaidproject.com.
 
As a result, Jolimeau and his colleagues are in the news, and sales are brisk. 
 
Though now integral to Haitian visual culture, Croix des Bouquet metalwork came into focus only in the 1950s, when American watercolorist DeWitt Peters and local metalsmith Georges Liautaud struck up a relationship.  Peters founded Port-au-Prince’s Centre d’Art in 1944, a turning point for inherently vibrant Haitian folk art. His advocacy on behalf first of painters and subsequently of other craftspeople helped carve out a central place for the arts in Haiti, as well as markets at home and abroad for their work. 
 
Liautaud was a talented metal craftsman who made, among many things artistic and utilitarian, iron crosses to mark the graves of fellow townspeople.  Their elegant and inventive embellishments caught Peters’ eye.  With the slightest encouragement, Liautaud’s work expanded into beautifully worked figures from everyday life and from Haitian voudou.   The amazing vocabulary he developed inspired, in turn, an explosion of creativity in other metal craftsmen in Croix des Bouquet, and the art of fer decoupe’ now employs dozens of craftspeople in 40 ateliers.
 
Jolimeau, who, like most of Croix des Bouquet’s metalsmiths, traces his artistic roots back to Liautaud, sells his work to a small number of importers bringing Haitian art to the US and Europe. And he travels occasionally to special venues like Santa Fe’s annual International Folk Art Market. But work of such cultural richness and skill – not to mention its economic importance to dozens of artists and their families  – cries out for larger markets.
 
Enter Brandaid Project, the brainchild of four North Americans, whose mission is to elevate appreciation of fine artisanry wherever it is made, to create brand identities which carry a cultural message into the consumer marketplace, to widen the purchasing audience, and to ensure abundant compensation for artisans whose work is involved. The company works from a for-profit platform with the equitable goals of a non-profit. Brandaid co-founders include Cameron Brohman, a resident of Haiti for many years and active in international development; David Belle, documentary filmmaker and founder of Haiti’s only film school, the Cine’ Institute; Tony Pigott, president of advertising agency J. Walter Thompson in Canada; and Paul Haggis, Oscar-winning screenwriter and director.
 
“We hit upon Brandaid Project only after Tony and I had talked for two decades about the power of branding, consumer movements and trends -- in the context of global poverty.  Over time we saw a seismic shift in consumer engagement with poverty, which we translated as a demand for new brands that address solutions to the world’s problems,” says co-founder Brohman about the motivation behind the four coming together to establish Brandaid Project.
 
Brandaid’s idea that poverty can be addressed with methods usually reserved for the corporate marketing of, for example, Captain Crunch and Cadillacs, seems at first incongruous. But Pigott quickly explains away the problem: “The key to effective branding is to distill and express the differentiating truth about a given product, company or service. Many, many artisan communities have great richness and authenticity but struggle to capture and express this in a consistent and sustained way.  Brandaid Project brings together talented people from the marketing, design and brand world.  We develop (in collaboration with the artisan communities) a combination of key insights about the community and cultural context itself, and the consumer and social conditions that the brand is operating within. This process leads to a clear strategic positioning which in turn becomes the guidance for the creative articulation of a brand name, a theme, a structure and approach to the story and the communication elements to represent the brand.”  
 
In Brandaid’s work with Croix des Bouquets, the process of defining Haitian metalwork as a brand has led to the creation of a microsite, a word mark and brand identity, a web video, a banner ad, Viral/TV ads, and posters.  Croix des Bouquets is at the beginning of its journey towards the kind of consumer resonance held by other culturally and geographically specific identities like Bordeaux wines or Murano glass. But as Brandaid networks into a prestigious group of potential media and retail partners, such success may be within reach. 
 
While no crystal ball can predict the results of Brandaid Project’s consumer marketing tools, the advocacy of a multitalented and committed group like Brandaid can only help Haitian artisans. In recounting people’s reactions to the recent vanity Fair event in New York, Brandaid’s David Belle comments, “There's so little in our lives these days that feels hand made, and the art so clearly shows the fact that it was all done by hand, without power tools -- only a hammer, chisel and wire brush. Every single ridge or raised dimple is an individual chisel mark. A close look reveals hundreds and hundreds of hammer strokes. I think people respond to that, and respect it.  When someone first looks at this work and says, ‘Oh my God, what is that!’ I can’t wait to start explaining.”
 
For more information, visit www.brandaidproject.com.