A Caregiver’s Butterfly Garden installation at Escanaba Public Library (Liam Houston)

ESCANABA — Tuesday afternoon an art installation was put up at the Escanaba Public Library as part of ‘A Caregiver’s Butterfly Garden’ initiative.

A Caregiver’s Butterfly Garden is a statewide traveling public art initiative honoring Michigan’s Direct Care Workers through vibrant, immersive, hand-crafted exhibits. The installation at the library features a piece created by artist-in-residence Zahrah Resh.

“It is my hope that the garden installation will serve not only to honor Direct Care Workers, but to provide a place for a diverse community to have a moment of respite — to wonder, enjoy, reflect, and savor the colors of a happy, whimsical, and carefree garden,” Resh stated in official materials about the project.

The butterfly garden itself is populated with hand-crafted butterflies, which will be put up around Resh’s piece. These butterflies were hand painted and constructed by communities in lower Michigan. The local community is encouraged to get involved in creating butterflies for the project, which can be added to the garden at the library, or sent with the project to fill out existing and new gardens across the state.

Hand made butterflies, created with painted paper, folded into wings and secured with two zip ties to form the antennae (Liam Houston)

At the event, Resh noted, “This is your garden. It is for the community to create and use however they wish.”

The butterflies serve as a therapeutic outlet for members of the community. Caregivers, residents receiving care and members of the community can write messages on the slips of paper used to create the butterflies. These messages are obscured from view once the butterflies are crafted, allowing for participants to use the creation of a butterfly as a private outlet for their experiences.

The project is designed to honor Michigan’s over 165,000 Direct Care Workers, recognising their efforts and struggles in a workforce currently facing several challenges. Currently, Michigan faces a DCW shortage of roughly 36,000. One of the project’s goals is to encourage advocacy for solutions to this issue and other issues like the high turnover rate of DCWs and a need for higher wages.

“This exhibit is both a tribute and a call to action. Michigan continues to face a critical shortage of direct care workers, and A Caregiver’s Butterfly Garden helps make that invisible challenge visible through art, storytelling, and community participation. Launching at Escanaba Public Library allows us to reach families, students, future caregivers, and community leaders in a meaningful and accessible way,” Rochelle Berry, project manager for the gardens, relayed to the press.

“Its a bipartisan problem, we all know someone who needs care, and we will all likely need to receive care someday, in some form or another,” Berry commented at Tuesday’s event. “It’s really a human issue,”

The initiative is put on in partnership with the IMPART Alliance initiative. The IMPART Alliance is an organization within the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University. This organization is dedicated to helping Michigan build an infrastructure that can expand and support the direct care workforce, a fast-growing sector state and nation wide.

A Caregiver’s Butterfly Garden continues its work with more installations going up across the UP. A second installation went up in Baraga on Wednesday, and a third goes up today in Marquette at 11 a.m.

More information on the project and how to get involved can be found on the IMPART Alliance’s page on the project; impartalliance.msu.edu/butterfly-gardens.

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Liam Houston can be reached at 906-786-2021 or lhouston@dailypress.net.