The MSU AgeAlive Butterfly Garden at the MSU Federal Credit Union Headquarters by artist Zahrah Resh on March 21, 2022.
When artist Zahrah Resh entered the Grand Rapids ArtPrize competition in 2017, she never saw her artwork as much more than a hobby. The only thing on her mind was the $225,000 prize given to the winner.
Upon signing up, she was given the nearby Spectrum Health Hospital as her venue. Resh came up with a garden made up of paper butterflies made by the patients there, and installed it in the Lemmen-Holton Cancer Pavilion lobby.
She kept her mindset of garnering votes and winning money as she opened the exhibit. This changed when she sparked conversation with a man visiting the garden.
“This one man got a very bad diagnosis from his physician, and has like 18 weeks to live,” Resh recalled. “He was smiling and he said ‘This is how I imagine heaven would look like, and I think if heaven looks like this, I’m happy to go’.”
He was far from the only one who expressed their love of the exhibit. 10-year-old boys, daughters of dying mothers and burnt out nurses all came to the garden to recharge in the beauty of it. It changed how Resh saw her artwork and showed how it could impact people.
“That’s worth more than $225,000, to make people feel good,” Resh said. “Now I see that I can do things, that I did something. It makes me feel very proud of myself.”
Resh didn’t win the $225,000, but she received a call from AgeAlive — a Michigan State University based organization that connects students with elderly members of the East Lansing community. They asked her to bring her exhibit to East Lansing.
As for the venue for the exhibit, Michigan State University Federal Credit Union offered its headquarters lobby on West Road.
This year’s edition of the garden opened March 10, with Resh building it under the title of “artist in residence” at AgeAlive. It contains over 1,000 butterflies created by AgeAlive participants, MSUFCU employees and other community members.
Director of AgeAlive Clare Luz said the garden served two purposes: To support intergenerational friendships and uplift the community.
“That’s one way in which to bring generations together, through the community butterfly making events,” Luz said. “We’ve encouraged people to make butterflies together and write messages on them, sort of life affirming messages or messages of hope. So it’s a good way to bring people together.”
MSUFCU’s 50+ Affinity Group saw the project as an opportunity to get their employees involved with a good cause and create a visually appealing environment in their lobby.
“It’s very unexpected for many people when they come in,” MSUFCU Chief Marketing Officer Deidre Davis said. “Then they pause, and so many times we are having reactions of like, “Oh wow! What’s going on?’.”
The message of the exhibit is subjective to each person who visits it.
Resh sees the garden as a place of strength. She said the butterflies people make represent resilience — a conclusion she came to at the cancer center installation.
“In their illness, they see beauty, they see possibilities,” Resh said. “I really thought about it, because butterfly means strength, right?”
Luz, on the other hand, sees the garden as a way to celebrate people’ individuality coming together to make a whole.
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“Every single butterfly is unique, and you bring them together to celebrate unity,” Luz said. “It’s pretty universal that people, when they see it, it’s immediately uplifting.”
Davis takes the uniqueness of the butterflies as the meaning itself.
“Every single thing here has its own personality, its own distinct look and feel and attraction,” Davis said. “It’s a way of bringing everyone together so that we can celebrate everyone’s unique attributes.”
The community will have more time to celebrate the exhibit’s meaning, as a new installation is opening at the MSU horticulture gardens on April 30. This will be the first outdoor edition, with the butterflies sporting a special coat allowing them to brave the elements.
