Pollinator Day comes to Black Mountain Center for the Arts

Swannanoa Valley Museum partnership brings a full day of activities

Jessica Klarp
Guest contributor
The Valley Echo
May 26, 2021

Nate Barton’s “Take Flight” workshop, one of many events scheduled for Pollinator Day, will teach participants to make lightweight earrings inspired by butterfly wings. The May 29 event, which highlights the importance of pollinators and gardens to support them, is a partnership between the Black Mountain Center for the Arts and Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center. Photo courtesy of BMCA

A partnership between the Black Mountain Center for the Arts and the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center will celebrate the importance of pollinators and pollinator gardens in the local environment, Saturday, May 29.

Pollinator Day will feature a wide variety of opportunities to participate.

Beginning at 10 a.m., free crafts such as chalk art and whirlygig making will be offered behind the Museum and Arts Center. There will be a pop-up pottery and plant market in the back of BMCA from 10 a.m.- 2 p.m., and local artist Clayton Sharp will have photography on display in the Art Center’s Upper Gallery.

At 1 p.m., Emily Sampson of Patchwork Meadows will host a garden talk, focusing on the importance of butterflies and why butterfly gardens are important to support their health and growth, at the pollinator garden she installed behind the buildings last year.

Sampson has made a career of promoting natural landscapes. She has been a grower at Banner Greenhouse in Mills River and for Painters in Old Fort. In 2015, she began creating and maintaining pollinator spaces along the Black Mountain Greenway and thanks to the success of those corridors, was hired by the Black Mountain Recreation and Parks department to develop and care for pollinator garden and meadow spaces. She started Patchwork Meadows in 2020 to create pollinator habitats for private landowners in addition to the public spaces she continues to create and maintain for the town.

From 2 - 4 p.m., local artist Nate Barton is leading a butterfly earring workshop, “Take Flight.” Barton will guide participants through the process of using multiple mediums to make a pair of lightweight and beautiful earrings from scratch. This workshop is available to ages 9 and up, and no experience is necessary. The $30 fee includes supplies, and registeration for this workshop is available at blackmountainarts.org/visualart.

The Arts Center has a history of bringing awareness to pollinators. Starting in 2016 artist and BMCA board member Libba Tracy spearheaded a series of yearly events focused on bringing awareness to the habitat loss and population declines of Monarch butterflies, bees, birds and bats. These events involved many different elements of our community from area third graders and their families to artists to conservationists. The tangible result of those awareness events brought milkweed to many greenspaces in our region, bat boxes to the Veterans Park and chimney swift nesting boxes to the golf course and next to the library.

The Black Mountain Center for the Arts is located at 225 West State Street. Activities for this event can be accessed through the back parking lot off S. Dougherty St. For more information visit Blackmountainarts.org or history.swannanoavalleymuseum.org.