Spring Blooms Large and Colorful at the Chewelah Recycled Art Installation

April’s Spring Blooms and Buzzing Pollinators art installation in Chewelah isn’t just a garden variety encounter with flowers and butterflies. This “larger-than-life” art project, made from 100% recycled materials, features imaginative pollinators – bees, butterflies, and other insects; whimsical flowers, and garden cornucopia all fashioned collaboratively by Stevens County students, artists, and residents using cast-off, found, or recycled materials. 

Nondis Taylor, an event organizer, explained, “Last year we had this idea because she [Marci Bravo] had done this incredible underwater world art piece that she had on display in the Colville Public Library. It was really fantastic and it was all out of recycled materials – jellyfish, regular fish, and shrimp. So this year we said, ‘Let's do it again,’ but this time it’s all about spring pollinators and blossoms.”

Multimedia artist Marci Bravo partnered with the Chewelah Arts Guild, Art in Schools program, First Thursday Art Walk, and the Libraries of Stevens County to design and organize this year’s project. According to Taylor, the group brought professional artists into classrooms throughout the greater Chewelah area to mentor and assist students, providing them with hands-on art experiences that help foster creative expression, accomplishment, and ultimately a real-life art installation they can take great pride in.

“The kids from several of our different schools have made bugs and flowers, as well as people from all over have been going to both the Colville Public Library and the Chewelah Public Library where they're making oversized insects or flowers, or they're dropping them off at the libraries or Seekers Bookstore in Colville to be part of the recycled art installation and this celebration of spring and environmental awareness,” Taylor said.

The completed installation is scheduled to be unveiled in the display window of Bradley’s Taekwondo, located at 114 E. Main Avenue, Chewelah, during the First Thursday Art Walk on April 2 from 5-8 p.m. as part of Chewelah’s Earth Day celebrations.

Additional events will be held during the Art Walk at participating downtown locations. “The Art Walk will be primarily where a lot of this will be displayed and for sale,” Taylor noted. “There will be about 10 artists working in recycled materials – everything from glass, old photographs, repurposed musical instruments, handbags, and jewelry at the Recycled Arts Show in the Aaron Huff Cultural Center Building at 214 E. Main, plus a Recycled Art Display by the students of Quartzite Learning and a hands-on workshop led by Gail Churape, president of the Chewelah Arts Guild,” she said.

For more information, visit chewelahartsguild.org.