Warren Resident Combines Art with Environmental Education at Coffee Depot

Warren resident Kim Botelho has found a happy intersection of digital photography and environmental education. Botelho, Director of Education at Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown, is the featured photographer at this month. She’s using the show as platform to promote the art programs at the sanctuary.

At her opening reception last Sunday night, Botelho spoke about the sanctuary, particularly the art and nature immersion program they offer at Central Falls High School. Botelho treated the audience to a spoken word performance with a piece she wrote during a class with the Central Falls students. 

“You say you’re doing no harm
. There’s no need for alarm.
 But all you do is chop down those trees. Those trees. 
Those beautiful, colorful, swaying, swaying, swaying in the breeze Truffula Trees,” she recited, with a nod to Dr. Seuss’s book "The Lorax."

Botelho studied environmental science in college and went on to teach environmental education in Wisconsin before moving back to Rhode Island. From 1997 to 2006 Botelho lived on Prudence Island while working for the Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. It was during her time on the sparsely populated island that she began to photograph her environment while on hikes with her dog.

“I’d always had a dream of writing and photographing my own nature stories,” says Botelho.

With an eye toward that dream Botelho left her post to attend a nine-month digital photography immersion program at Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts. In the following year Botelho’s instincts were validated. A photograph of a baby monkey she took at the Roger Williams Zoo received an Honorable Mention in National Geographic’s 2007 Photography Contest. The image, which can be seen in the current exhibition, was selected from a pool of nearly 150,000 entries.

Botelho has since started her own company, EarthStart Photography, which she tends to part-time when not working at the sanctuary. She shoots nature-inspired work as well as portraits and weddings. Currently she is running a promotional fundraiser for Norman Bird Sanctuary. For clients who book portrait or wedding sessions there, Botelho will donate $100 back to the sanctuary.

Kim Botelho’s exhibition of nature photography at Coffee Depot will be up through the end of May.