Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate

Jenn Houle

Hand paint butterfly shaped signs for a community art project! Learn about the magical power of native plants to heal our fragile planet.

Merrimac Public Library

<h3>Native plants can help save our planet! Learn how.</h3><ul><li>Learn about native plants' magic power to save pollinators &amp; the planet!</li><li>Receive native seeds for your own garden.</li><li>Discuss &amp; inspire easy actions to heal the earth.</li><li>Add a flower to community painted signs for the 2025 Butterfly Mural Migration touring Merrimack Valley.</li></ul> Local public artist Jenn Houle will teach painting and winter sowing planting skills in this workshop. The event will begin with an INSECT lecture by guest speaker Lance Hidy.

<h3>During this workshop you will:</h3>Learn about the magic of native plants to help restore our ecosystem with talks by Lance and Jenn. Signs will be painted in the indoor classroom. Workshop is geared towards teens and adults, all art experience levels! Children may attend with supervision. Artist grade mural paint is used. <h3>Bring</h3><ol><li>two clean 4" planting pots (if you have them)</li><li>smock to protect your clothes</li><li>used good condition 18x24" corrugated plastic yard signs to be turned into future butterfly signs if you would like to contribute!</li></ol> If you think you don’t like INSECTS, then this is the presentation for you. Lance Hidy will give you a new appreciation for their beauty, and for their importance to our planet’s ecosystems.Lance tells the story of falling in love with insects at age ten while fly fishing with his father in Oregon. His youthful fascination with the mayflies, caddis flies, and stone flies that live in trout streams is illustrated by his own artwork made in the 1960s. His father, Vernon S. “Pete” Hidy, was well-known as a fly fisherman, especially for the trout flies he created, all based on his knowledge of insects. Lance will show his high-resolution photographs of those hand-made flies, along with the living insects he has photographed in his backyard over the past eleven years. Lance will share his concern as he has watched the decline of local insect and wildlife populations, and will explain why there is movement to bring native plants into your gardens.

‘Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate’ (PPC) is a public art mural project led by artist Jenn Houle that cultivates ‘botanical belonging’, opens conversations about decolonizing public and private land, and restores ecosystem health with native plants. Through community art and nature workshops, PPC inspires a cultural shift from echoes of colonization, lawns &amp; imported plants, towards restorative land use: interspecies habitat for seasonal cycles in a shifting climate. At Plant and Paint &amp; Seed Stories workshops in Oct 2024 - Jan 2025, participants will paint Butterfly Mural signs then plant and keep the seeds of native pollinator-friendly species and share ‘Seed Stories’ personal connections to place &amp; plants. The community will create 200 Butterfly Mural signs to display in their yards or join the upcoming 2025 summer Butterfly Mural migration, and Seed Story packets of native seeds will be distributed at partner sites including conservation land, public libraries and schools.Special thanks to Collective Futures Fund Ongoing Platforms Grant, a regranting program hosted by Tufts University Art Galleries

Workshop Instructor BiosLance Hidy is a graphic artist, specializing in the design of books, posters, and photography. He has designed three U.S. postage stamps, the Penumbra font family for Adobe, and was the designer of the photography books of Ansel Adams. He taught art and design halftime at Northern Essex Community College for 18 years, plus three years working in their disability services department. A lifelong environmentalist, Lance's hobby is photographing the insects and other wildlife in his backyard. He and his wife Cindia Sanford live in Merrimac.---Jenn Houle is a public artist and native New Englander. Two decades of teaching art, endless naturalist curiosity, a deep concern for all living beings, and motherhood shapes her artistic practice. Jenn is a current Great Marsh Artist at Manship Artist Residency, and has created a ‘Dark Skies’ collaborative glow-in-the-dark mural and public program at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.Other art residencies include the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (twice, once evacuated during fire storms then returned to lead synchronous fireflies programming), Vermont Studio Center and is a 2024 ChangeMaker with Essex County Community Foundation. Ms. Houle is a grant recipient from the Collective Futures Fund, Puffin Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Essex County Community Foundation and Cornell Council for the Arts. A painter at heart, she received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and later an MFA from Cornell University. She currently teaches at Fitchburg State University and Northern Essex Community College. Learn more www.jennhoule.com.

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Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate

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Plant Paint Cross-Pollinate

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