The Exhibit
Zahrah Resh, Michigan State University (MSU) IMPART Alliance Artist in Residence joins us for a year of evolving art in the corridor. With a deep network of statewide stakeholders, IMPART Alliance is at the forefront of addressing Michigan’s direct care workforce shortage, helping develop lasting solutions to recruit, retain, and empower Direct Care Workers.
Spring Exhibition, A Caregiver’s Butterfly Garden:
Zahrah’s first butterfly garden installation was an entry to 2017 ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. Funded by Center for Hematology of Central & West Michigan, she designed and created a site-specific butterfly garden for the lobby of the Lemmon-Holton Cancer Pavilion in Grand Rapids. Together with over a thousand cancer patients and survivors, their family and friends, and the medical community at the center, approximately 6500 butterflies were folded from hand painted papers to be installed in the space. She designed and created the whimsical paper florals and botanical components and assembled the final installation of the garden.
The resulting installation became a celebration of artistic collaboration between people of all ages with challenging health circumstances, caregivers, friends, and members of the community. Together they experienced the healing power of art as the garden they created together became a sanctuary for hope and reflection.
In 2019 Zahrah was appointed as the artist in residence with MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Age Alive organization. Her role is to help lead, design and create art activities for a site specific butterfly gardens, to promote Age Alive’s mission of community inclusiveness through healthy, positive, engaging intergenerational activities. She has worked with organizations like Boys and Girls Club of Lansing, Corewell Health, and MSUFCU. This year she was appointed as the Artist Facilitator to the visiting Mandela Washington Fellows from Africa attending MSU Mandela Institute at MSU. She has had butterfly gardens installed and exhibited in the main lobby of the MSU Federal Credit Union headquarters in East Lansing, East Lansing Hannah Community Center, Alliance Ob/Gyn Clinic, the MSU 4H Children’s Garden, and in the lobby of MSU International Center.
In 2024, Zahrah was appointed Artist in Residence for MSU IMPART Alliance, a sister organization of AgeAlive dedicated to advancing the skills, knowledge, and support of Michigan’s Direct Care Workers (DCWs). In this role, she promotes artmaking and creative activities as tools to help caregivers care for their mental health, manage stress, and enhance their overall wellbeing. Zahrah’s initiatives align with IMPART’s mission to uplift the essential DCW workforce by fostering resilience and professional growth through innovative programs and partnerships.
The Artist
Zahrah Resh is a self-taught artist who has been honing her craft for 20 years. A graduate of Michigan State University’s Broad School of Business, she immigrated to the United States when she was young and has lived here for more than half her lifetime. Her artistic endeavors began at an early age when she first learned the art of cooking from her mother. Food became her first art medium. By layering flavors and textures and mixing colors of different ingredients she learned to create cuisines from comfort foods to rich, exotic offerings.
Zahrah’s paintings are like her cooking. They range from restorative, comforting and reflective works to works that are vibrant, challenging, and exploratory. Colors, textures and forms are brushed, scraped and spread on canvas or paper to create abstract paintings that are bright and highly energized, saturated with color. She cuts and pastes paper to create collages, sculpts mixed media forms with fibers, paper, textiles and embellish them with found nontraditional objects. She believes her role as an artist to be that of a creator of images and whimsical forms and leaves interpretation and story telling of these images to the viewers. Zahrah’s most recent endeavor is creating large scale, site specific, handmade paper butterfly and floral garden installations.
In 2024, she was appointed as the Artist in Residence for Age Alive’s sister organization, IMPART Alliance, an organization to help advance skills and knowledge of Michigan Direct Care Workers. Her role is to promote art making and activities to caregivers to help them care for their mental health and wellbeing and cope with the stress of their work.
Related Programming
Student Programming Key Concepts & Ideas: mixed-media, social emotional learning, abstraction, structured play, process oriented art making
Field Trips to the SCA
All Ages | Single visit to the SCA | 45 – 90 minutes
Includes tour & hands-on activity
This project (A Caregivers Butterfly Garden on display at the SCA) is supported by grants to MSU IMPART Alliance, administered by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services; one through FY23 General Funds and one through American Rescue Plan Act/Home and Community-Based Services Spending Plan funds.
Camps + Classes
All ages can get creative with Zahrah and learn how to THRIVE in 2025.
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