19 Nov The Monarch as a Symbol – LHIP Art Project
Being granted the opportunity to produce an art project that shows the cultural significance of Latino contributions in our respective parks. With a wide open theme, you could really take it anywhere from landscapes, structures, historical figures, to anything else you can come up with. It took me a while to decide on what to create for my project. I lack much artistic experience, so signing up for this project was a bit of a leap for me. This is only the third ever painting I’ve completed. Thanks to the LHIP program providing me with art materials, I was able to create an acrylic painting.
Starting off with my inspiration:
Early into my internship, I was invited out to go with the vegetation crew under resource management to go on a butterfly survey on a restoration site. This site lies on the former Richfield Coliseum. This was a sports and entertainment center open from 1974 to 1994, built as the home for the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. For 20 years, basketball games were hosted, concerts were performed, and even a circus was paraded through, bringing people from all over the Cleveland-Akron area to this venue. However, in 1994, the Cleveland Cavaliers moved from the Richfield Coliseum to downtown Cleveland. Marking the end of the Richfield Coliseum, the venue remained vacant for a few years before the owners, the Gund Family, sold it to the Trust for Public Lands, who would then transfer ownership to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The Trust for Public Lands spearheaded the reclamation by demolishing the building, removing 80 acres of asphalt parking lots, and adding topsoil with 5,000 pounds of seeds for soil stabilization. Cuyahoga Valley National Park then led the grassland restoration, now having 60 acres of natural meadow habitat that houses rare birds like the bobolink and eastern meadowlark, along with butterflies like the monarch butterfly.
Ground Up Pepper:
With the materials provided for me, I was able to recreate my inspiration picture, mostly of acrylic, but I also used a homemade pigment to create the monarch’s wings. This is an aspect of the painting I really enjoyed doing, while adding a lot more significance to the art. To create this orange pigment, I ground up some chile peppers that are frequently used in traditional Mexican cuisine. The pigment was created with ground-up chile de arbol and chile de ancho that I ground up with my molcajete. A molcajete is a traditional mortar and pestle made from volcanic rock to grind spices and make chiles. Adding a Mexican flavor to the art added an aspect that is important to me and my culture, it being food. Mexican cuisine runs as deep as the culture itself, where we can be defined and differentiated by the foods we eat. Our food will always remind us of who we are and where we come from.
My Painting: 
The choice of depicting a monarch was very intentional. To Mexican Americans all around, the monarch butterfly is a symbol and an icon. Its representation of the Mexican diaspora’s struggle of travel and connection to place is symbolic within the life cycle of the monarch. Monarchs have a multi-generational migration across North America to finally return to Mexico in the fall, around the Dia de los Muertos, to fulfill their arduous journey. The monarch is a symbol who leaves their homes to travel for better opportunities while not letting go of their past. The indigenous peoples of Michoacán, like the Purépecha and Mazahua, have always connected the return of the monarchs for winter with the ancestors returning for Dia de los Muertos. Since time immemorial, the monarch has been a symbol of culture, community, and connection, so that even today it is nothing new, but still as significant.
For this art project, I wanted to tie in the significance of the monarch within the restoration site in Ohio. Ohio is a long way from where this monarch is traveling; however, it still knows where it’s going. Even if this place has been hostile to the monarch in the past, and still may be today, it still finds a way to remain true to itself and its past to find a place to thrive. To some, this may just be another butterfly in some meadow, but to me, it’s a story of resilience; resilience in people, culture, and nature. Truly a symbol of Us.
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