ARTS & LITERATURE

ARTS & LITERATURE LONGLEAF Art SPOTLIGHT Home + Hoop

ABOUT THE ARTIST

After moving far and frequently as a child, it was important to Kevina Casaletto to put down deep roots once she chose coastal North Carolina as her home in 2002, which meant learning as much as she could about the local ecosystem. She became aware of longleaf pine’s relationship with fire at an Earth Day celebration at what is now Long Leaf Park in Wilmington, North Carolina. Enthralled by the idea that longleaf needs fire to thrive, she soon learned about Wilmington’s Fire in the Pines Festival. And then a friend loaned her Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Over the years, Kevina’s fascination with fire and the pines that once covered most of the Southeast continued to grow.

With in-person school unavailable during the pandemic, Kevina developed supplemental lessons on local ecology for her two children. They spent mornings in salt marshes and nature reserves sketching periwinkles, cicadas, and flytraps. At the same time, Kevina resumed her hand embroidery hobby, stitching hoops inspired by the coastal landscape while her children explored the marsh or climbed trees. Since then, she has launched her small business, Home + Hoop, finding a robust community of people passionate about longleaf education and restoration.

Kevina uses her art to spark an appreciation for this incredibly diverse and once prolific ecological system. Through Home + Hoop, she partners with individuals and organizations in the longleaf restoration field to promote their work and spread knowledge about the unique plants and animals dependent on a landscape built by fire. She looks forward to learning and sharing more longleaf knowledge across the Southeast, and hopefully, the nation. Long live the longleaf!

ABOUT THE ART

Kevina’s pieces are hand-embroidered custom cotton hoops. She utilizes watercolor paint and embroidery floss to achieve layered landscapes featuring native southeastern plants and ecosystems. Fire, longleaf pines, and native carnivorous plants are some of her favorite subjects.

Follow Home + Hoop on Facebook & on Instagram @homeandhoop. Shop etsy.com/shop/homeandhoop or email Kevinacasaletto@gmail.com for custom commissions.

Save the Snails Magnificent Ramshorn Snail created for Coastal Plain

Conservation Group, 2021.

Cotton, embroidery floss, watercolor, and acrylic on 5” bamboo hoop

Longleaf Series, 2021 Lifecycle of a Longleaf, Summer Savanna, Good Fire Cotton, embroidery floss, and watercolor on 6” bamboo hoops

Artist at Long Leaf Park with her piece, A Pine Fell in Love. Featured quote by Janisse Ray. Photo by Sara Williams. Triple Threat Series, 2021 Spoon-leaved Sundew, Venus Flytrap, Pitcher Plant Cotton, embroidery floss, and watercolor on 5” bamboo hoops

LONGLEAFLITERATURE The Last Butterflies

A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature

By Nick Haddad Princeton University Press, 2019 Reviewed by Sarah Crate, The Longleaf Alliance

The Last Butterflies by Nick Haddad had been on my reading list for some time, having first heard of it on The State of Things, a favorite North Carolina Public Radio program. It finally made it off the list and into my hands this summer, just as our native plant garden was bustling with pollinators. As I read through the author’s stories of the rarest butterflies, I was on my own butterfly journey. This was the summer that our prized milkweed finally flowered, after two years of waiting, and I was regularly on the lookout for monarch eggs. When I reached the chapter on monarchs, I happened to spy a female ovipositing in our milkweed patch. As I stalked this momma butterfly from a distance, texting photos and videos to my husband, I officially related to the author’s affinity for butterflies.

A familiar favorite, Monarch butterflies do make an appearance in The Last Butterflies, but most of the book is devoted to the rarest of species – those with small populations, small distributions, and substantial habitat loss. It was one of these species that motivated me to purchase the book. The St. Francis’ satyr, an endangered butterfly endemic to North Carolina, is known only to occur at Fort Bragg. The species is very dependent on disturbance; its grassy wetland habitat is created naturally by fire and flooding events from beavers. Today the military activities at Fort Bragg maintain the open wetland habitats as well as the surrounding longleaf pine uplands. For the St. Francis’ satyr and the other rare species highlighted in The Last Butterflies, a significant conservation challenge is determining the level of disturbance needed for critical habitat to increase small populations, while knowing this disturbance temporarily makes the habitat unsuitable, killing some individuals. Haddad repeatedly breaks down these complicated disturbance dynamics in a reader-friendly way while weaving in personal experiences, having sought out many of these species for his “butterfly life list.” The book’s conservation and ecological themes will resonate with anyone exploring these issues in the biological diverse longleaf pine ecosystems — home to many rare plants and animals, including rare butterflies.

“Weaving a vivid and personal narrative with ideas from ecology and conservation, Haddad illustrates the race against time to reverse the decline of six butterfly species. Many scientists mistakenly assume we fully understand butterflies’ natural histories. Yet, as with the Large Blue in England, we too often know too little and the conservation consequences are dire. Haddad argues that a hands-off approach is not effective and that in many instances, like for the Fender’s Blue and Bay Checkerspot, active and aggressive management is necessary. With deliberate conservation, rare butterflies can coexist with people, inhabit urban fringes, and, in the case of the St. Francis’ satyr, even reside on bomb ranges and military land.”