Great Plains Zoo education specialist created ornaments for Capitol Christmas tree

Katy Carchedi sat on the tiled floor of the South Dakota Capitol and looked up at the 27-foot Black Hills spruce tree, where 40 large animal ornaments hung interspersed with blue butterflies, smaller orbs containing ocean scenes and silver wreaths.

She could see the bison, the kangaroo and even the cockroach, hung among the branches, each one painted in a blue and white color scheme. She knew where the harder-to-find animals, like the snow leopard and the Japanese macaque, were hidden.

Carchedi, 29, had spent months sketching and cutting the designs, spray painting and hand painting each animal. It was by far the largest and most public art project she had ever done.

“I just soaked it in because it was a bigger deal than I thought,” she said. “I’m still processing it.”

Carchedi is part of the crew at the Great Plains Zoo and Butterfly House and Aquarium in Sioux Falls that had the honor of decorating the 2023 Capitol Christmas Tree. As the GPZ celebrates its 60th anniversary and the recent merger with the Butterfly House, the tree offers the organization the chance to look ahead to what the future holds.

And while Carchedi’s animal ornaments feature prominently on the tree, other ornaments and decorations show the amount of teamwork and collaboration from zoo team members that went into creating the magical “Diamond anniversary” blue and white Christmas tree.

How the project came to be

Denise DePaolo, the GPZ’s PR and marketing director, said that the Capitol building’s team reached out in the summer with the opportunity and the zoo happily said yes.

“We thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase the talented people in our team,” she said, explaining she reached out to certain team members, like Carchedi, who she knew were artistically talented.

Carchedi, who works at the zoo and Butterfly House as an education and engagement specialist, had already done murals across the zoo’s campus, including inside the Americas enclosure, and had participated in public art shows.

DePaolo said while she already had the blue, white, twinkly diamond anniversary vision in her head, it was up to the entire team of a dozen people across the zoo and the Butterfly House to come up with how to execute the theme. They also had the added challenge of making sure each element was sustainably made, in line with the zoo’s sustainability mission.

“It was getting a lot of that feedback from the team of ‘What’s possible? What should we do?’ And it was a really cool team effort,” DePaolo said.

Each animal ornament, standing between 18 to 40 inches tall, is made out of recycled plastic coroplast signs from the zoo. The tree topper, a lion meant to symbolize the future lion enclosure, was carved from purple foam by two team members and his tail is a pool noodle.

Representing Great Plains Zoo and the Butterfly House through art

Carchedi said the first thing she did when she was asked to make the ornaments was create a list of animals across each of the zoo and Butterfly House’s departments. She also looked at the animals included in the zoo’s conservation mission.

Of the 40 animals represented on the tree, only two aren't at the zoo: the Dakota Skipper, a prairie butterfly, and the black-footed ferret.

Featured on the tree are orbs of aquatic seascapes made by Butterfly House staff. Sixty blue morpho butterflies, the only purchased element, are also spread out across the tree, a nod to the Butterfly House.

The animals also got to take part in the ornament making.

“We did footprints,” DePaolo said, explaining every time an animal, such as a penguin or a rhino, would have a procedure, the vet team would take a print of the animal’s foot. The prints were then used as the centerpiece of a star ornament, 37 in total.

Three of the ornaments painted by Carchedi are specifically portraits of animals at the zoo. There’s the black bear, Marshmallow, who can be identified by the white patch on her chest, and there’s Jabba, the stonefish.

Carchedi also painted the beloved Japanese macaque Tama, who died earlier this year.

“She had a little teardrop tattoo so I put that on,” she said. “I mostly did the snow monkey one just for her keepers.”

There’s also a sea cucumber, which Carchedi joked was the hidden pickle in the Christmas tree.

The sea cucumber and the jellyfish were easy designs, Carchedi said. But the tarantula was difficult because of the time it took to cut out each leg and the detail that went into it. She added eye shine marks to each animal, part of her own artistic style.

But she still had to deal with the wind while spray painting. Carchedi made a small hut out of recycled signs to protect the ornaments as she painted.

“I think spray painting was the hardest part because I could not coordinate the signs, my body,” in the outdoor space, Carchedi said.

‘A proud moment’

Carchedi finished the ornaments in mid-October. The lion tree topper, which Carchedi had to hand paint since spray paint could melt the foam, was finished right before Halloween, a few days before the topper had to go to Pierre.

“[The Capitol team] had to fix the topper before they could stand the tree up because that’s just one element that would not be possible to get up there once the tree was standing,” DePaolo said.

The zoo and Butterfly House team went up to Pierre to help decorate the tree in November. The decoration took less than a day with members of the Capitol team helping.

“They cared about what the tree looked like too and they wanted to make sure that it looked good,” Carchedi said of the Capitol team.

DePaolo added, “They had the scaffold ready to go, they are a well-oiled machine. They were so wonderful to work with.”

Carchedi wasn’t able to go to the tree lighting ceremony but DePaolo was, along with the zoo’s chief operating officer, Audrey Otto-Pepper.

“To see it come to life at once and hear the oohs and ahhs of people, it was a really proud moment,” DePaolo said. “It was something that I don’t think any of us ever expected to get a chance to work on.”

‘It’s heartwarming and encouraging’

DePaolo and Carchedi said the reaction to the tree has been positive with people posting on social media which ornament is their favorite. Employees at the Capitol have reached out to the zoo, saying each time they see the tree it causes them to smile.

All of the ornaments will come back to the zoo after Christmas and they plan to use them again for future Christmas decorations.

For Carchedi, she’s only started working on art professionally over the last year after a carpal tunnel surgery. She’s worked on art since she was a child and always incorporated animals into that art.

Being able to be the artist for the 40 animal ornaments, Carchedi said that it wasn’t until she was standing in the Capitol rotunda that she understood what she and the zoo had accomplished.

“Until you see it all together, it’s hard to understand the magnitude of the project,” she said. “I got to show both things that I really enjoy of animals and the artwork. That people responded well to it was just really heartwarming and encouraging as well.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: South Dakota Capitol Christmas Tree decorated by Great Plains Zoo