NEWBURYPORT – Vote for your favorite butterfly species until May 18 when it will be painted as a mural outside at the Senior Center. Candidate species are the fritillary, swallowtail, sulphur or mourning cloak butterfly.
In celebration of butterfly season, the city using state funds, is having an eight-foot by eight-foot mural painted of the butterfly species that is chosen by the community.
If approved by the Newburyport City Council, the artwork, entitled “Pollinator Passage,” will be painted by Amesbury artist Jenn Houle during the Green Expo, which is being held at the Senior Center and the Bresnahan Elementary School on that day.
The $1,500 artist fee is being paid by a Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness action grant, which is administered by the Greater Newburyport Green Expo and the city’s Resiliency Committee.
Houle teaches art at Fitchburg State College and Northern Essex Community College, and has taught at UMass Lowell, Montserrat College of Art and Southern New Hampshire University for more than two decades.
Approved unanimously by the Public Art Committee last week, the butterfly painting will also highlight native plant species that support the most caterpillar species. ♦
