The Baton Rouge Zoo will hold its second annual Art for Animals Festival on May 3, where the winners of the 3-month-long art exhibition will be announced.
Art for Animals is an event that exhibits 40 artists in the BR Zoo’s atrium. Visitors can peruse the gallery and see wildlife-inspired pieces like a 3D papier mache jellyfish, a framed painting detailing tropical parrots or a massive drawing of a jaguar.
The event is a nine-month process headed by Senior Communication Manager Brittany Tully. The zoo accepted art submissions from September to December, then chose the final 40 in January. From February to May, the art is on display for three months, ending with the festival and award ceremony. The winning artworks will be on display until May 9.
“We’re still building this baby,” Tully said. “It’s our smallest, compared to Zippity Zoo Fest, which has been around since the ’70s. Boo with the Zoo, which we’ve had over 20 years. Zoo Lights, which has been over 20, 30 years.”
The festival will include interactive painting with artist Joshua White, face painting and character meet and greets. The zoo education team will bring out some animals for petting, and there’ll also be a food court including snowballs, lemonade and blooming onions.
Each art piece in the atrium gallery has a paper plaque including the title, artist and category. If the artist is offering the piece for sale, 20% of the proceeds will support conservation programs such as Bowling for Rhinos, Bat Conservation International and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
Five awards will be announced at the festival, the prizes being handmade (or more so paw-made) paintings created by animals in the zoo. The process for creating each piece looked different, according to zoo educator Conni Pope, who helped the animals create each masterpiece.
Pope sprinkled mealworms around the paper for Leopard geckos Norma and Goldie, so that as they hunted they also painted. Similarly, Cypress the nutria chased a carrot through the paint and paper.
There are also paintings by Rosalind the American alligator, Fossa the tenrec, Noodle the domestic ferret, Lunch the box turtle and Wilbur the western hognose snake.
All animals were given the choice to participate or not, Pope said. Some may choose not to come out of the enclosure. Others may hang around the paper but not paint, in which case staff sat with them for a bit before putting them back in an enclosure.
“Some enjoy exploring and investigating, so them painting is just them exploring the smells and textures of the paint, paper, the space we’re using,” Pope said.
Pope’s favorite painting of the bunch goes to Cypress, the nutria. She chose blues, teals and greens for that painting.
“I think my brain goes, ‘she’s an aquatic animal, these are aquatic colors. They go together.” Pope said. “But I also really love the adorable little footprints we get from the leopard geckos and tenrec.”
After seeing success from last year’s Art for Animals, Tully extended the exhibition. It’ll be headed by a new program manager next year, so things are bound to change as they experiment with the event, she said.
“We’re continually growing this event,” Tully said. “What it looks like each year may change, but we may still keep things the same.”
This story was reported and written by a student with the support of the non-profit Louisiana Collegiate News Collaborative, an LSU-led coalition of eight universities funded by the Henry Luce and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundations.
