By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org

It is not an easy task to find an activity that will include a variety of ages and abilities and encourage people to participate. For Holland Home, the answer to completing that task came in the shape of a butterfly.

Holland Home operates several facilities such as the independent living facility Breton Woods, located near 44th and Breton Road in Kentwood, and Raybrook, located off of Burton Avenue near Calvin College. At these facilities, Holland Home offers its Vibrant Living program which provides residents with spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social and physical activities. 

“We look for programs that will be inclusive to everyone along with offering new opportunities for residents,” said Director of Resident Life Marenta Klinger.

Klinger said the Vibrant Living committee came together and wanted to do a program that would encompass a variety of ages, talents, and abilities, but the committee was not certain as to what that program should be.

Enter local artist Pamela Alderman. Alderman is a familiar name as she has participated in ArtPrize for the past 10 years with several of her pieces placing in the top 20. Alderman’s work is interactive and collaborative with one of her more well-known pieces “Wing and a Prayer” had 2013 ArtPrize visitors write notes for children in need and hang them on a wall. She made 20,000 vellum cards for the 2013 event, adding that she quickly ran out. 

With her signature red glasses and infectious smile. Alderman accepted the challenge presented to her from Holland Home of creating a piece of art that would be inclusive of the community’s residents and would be gallery quality to hang in the various facilities.

“My thoughts came to the Monarch butterfly,” Alderman said during a recent interview.

It takes five generations of the Monarch butterfly to migrate from Canada to Mexico and back again. Scientist believe the butterflies have some sort of internal mechanism that guides them to the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico with some butterflies returning to the exact fir trees of their ancestors. 

Alderman said she began to see patterns between the butterflies and seniors, who have been part of a long journey, growing strong through the challenges and stresses of life. Alderman said she saw the project as a way to celebrate the life of the seniors and an opportunity for the participants to share their stories.

With that in mind, she created three specific projects centered around the journey of the Monarch butterfly. The first project was called Patterns of Resiliency (Broken Wings No. 3) where residents in Holland Home’s independent living painted the backs of 324 plexiglass tiles that would be assembled to create a large butterfly.

“It was interesting, because we would ask people to paint and some would say, ‘I have no talent. I can’t paint,’” Alderman said. “We were like everyone can put paint on a tile.”

Some people did designs and others share their stories such as a World War II surviver who told her story of when the Allied Forces liberated France.

“She used green and blue for the country side and then red, white, and blue for the Allied Forces that came in,” Alderman said. 

The stories continued in the second project, called Legacy Journey (Broken Wings No. 4). Residents in both the independent living and the assisted living wrote or dictated legacy words on marble paper that depicted who they were or words that were meaningful to them. The papers were cut and used to form a second large butterfly.

The last project, Kaleidoscope (Broken Wings No. 5), focused on those living in Holland Home’s assisted living and skilled nursing. Residents painted with sponges on paper that was ripped up to form the final butterfly. At the same time, a group of carpenters from the independent living constructed frames for the butterflies, creating, as Alderman called it “a kaleidoscope of activity as the Holland Home community came together to create the final pieces.”

From there, Alderman created two sets of the butterflies, a set that is on display at Breton Woods and the other at Raybrook, so all the residents could enjoy the final pieces. Klinger said the pieces were all on display together for the unveiling earlier this year. The individual pieces are displayed in the lobby of the facilities, which are not open to the general public, Klinger said.

“It was the perfect project,” Klinger said, adding that about 400 residents and staff participated in the project. “Residents in every level care at both campuses were able to participate.”

Alderman said because of the project’s scope of bring people together of all abilities, she hopes to springboard off the Holland Home project and offer similar programs to other senior living facilities.

To learn more about Alderman’s art, visit pamelaalderman.com. To learn more about Holland Home, visit hollandhome.org.