Laucolo, illustrating biodiversity

It was not planned. Laurence Deschamps-Léger, alias Laucolo , was neither a draftswoman nor an artist. But she was interested in food and agriculture. Her experiences, her training and her career have quietly paved the way for the entrepreneur-creator who radiates and promotes local agriculture.

Laurence studied international development, with a focus on food sovereignty. However, she realizes that she wants to work here and not abroad. “I felt it was home, where I came from that I could make a difference and where I felt more relevant,” she explains.

A TASTE AT LUFA FARMS

Her journey continues at Lufa Farms where she organizes events and manages communications. A job rich in experience and learning. She rubs shoulders with the agri-food world with which she feels at ease. The idea of ​​a seasonal fruit and vegetable calendar germinated: “this is when I started to want to create visuals that could both catch the eye and be informative”. Leaving Lufa Farms, she wants to keep in touch with this area. From there is born Laucolo, his way of talking about agro-food.

DRAWING, A PRETEXT

“For me, drawing was a pretext and a way of talking about agri-food,” says Laurence. By dint of drawing her fruits and vegetables, she honed her talent as an illustrator and over the contracts, with various players in the agri-food industry, she immersed herself entirely in the field of visual arts.

During the first two years of Laucolo's existence, Laurence worked in parallel in a full-time non-profit organization. Evenings and weekends were devoted to her drawings before she took the plunge and started working full time.

We can admire his talent in magazines, companies and blogs, in addition to his online store. She talks about, among others, Caribou magazine , Prana bio and several local farmers. She works with both organizations and businesses in the food industry.

Over the years, Laurence devoted herself more to enriching her collection of botanical posters, cards and notebooks, always with the idea of ​​celebrating the seasonality and biodiversity of our foods.

Its magnificent calendar of seasonal fruits and vegetables is in its eighth edition in 2022. "People have really adopted it", she rejoices. “For me, it was a tangible way of sharing with people the fact that there are fruits and vegetables available year-round in Quebec. When we go to the grocery store, we should always be able to find potatoes from Quebec and if there aren't any, we can ask our grocery store manager. “, she explains.

SAFEGUARDING OUR BIODIVERSITY

Its aim is to talk about availability, seasonal products and biodiversity. These posters are a way for the illustrator to raise awareness and encourage biodiversity: “People need to be both informed and inspired. ".

Indeed, “75% of the world's agro-food biodiversity has disappeared in the last hundred years”, that's huge! Laurence believes that it is essential to take care of the remaining 25%, to help recreate new varieties adapted to our climate and to diversify our diet. "We eat about ten plants (rice, corn, soybeans, canola, etc.), it comes down to that, it's a bit flat," worries Laurence. These posters are a way to address issues of biodiversity and seasonality, to take an interest in our food and to talk about it with customers.

Alongside her illustration work, Laurence has been involved since 2016 with On Sème , an organization she co-founded with her friend Sara Maranda-Gauvin and whose mission is to contribute to the development of a fair and sustainable food system. in addition to showcasing the work of local artisans and producers. Thanks to this involvement, Laurence was able to participate in the organization of local craftsmen's markets (May Market and November Market). The Urban Vegetable Garden School, a program led by the organization and created by his colleague Sara, also allows him to participate in educational gardening every summer.

LAUCOLO'S PROJECTS

In the winter of 2018, Laurence created a “dream” notebook concept in which she could write down basic recipe ideas organized by season. Its crowdfunding campaign on Ulule was a great success since its objective was exceeded by 375%. This beautiful project allowed her to work on different aspects of entrepreneurship since she managed the production of the book from a to z. In 2022, after surveying people using the first version of the notebook, she decided to go back to production to create a new edition. If all goes well it will come out somewhere in the spring, at the same time as the fiddleheads.

Inspired by the international scene – few illustrators focus on illustrating food in Quebec – she increasingly wants to develop visual tools that help navigate the complexity of food systems.

It is always surprising and impressive to meet an entrepreneur, but especially an artist, who arrived there by chance. If art was not a vocation, it became a means of expression, then a talent to be exploited. Laucolo allows us to admire, know and understand our Quebec agri-food culture. It contributes to its influence and to our education. Actor of change, she makes us want to discover and respect our lands.

To know everything about Laucolo, visit his member profile .

Revisited in January 2022 by Ariane Lessard