La Escuela Vista Del Mar
Costa Rica
The Location
Sparkroot Wild, a bird sanctuary and conservation nonprofit based near Pavones in Costa Rica’s extreme south, developed a meaningful partnership with The Good of the Hive. Matt met Eden River Lucash when she volunteered to join the Red Wolf Recovery Center mural in Columbia NC (at just 15 years-old). She and her family, led by matriarch Alisa Esposito, founded Spark Root Wild a year later and invited Matt to come paint bees, as well as threatened and endemic Costa Rican birds in a mural at Escuela Vista del Mar - the primary school located right next door to Sparkroot Wild’s headquarters. The organizations came together to plant conservation gardens — including passionfruit vines along a shared trellis where birds and bees alike could thrive on the flowers.
Scroll through the photo gallery below to view images from the project.
Why Honey Bees?
Sparkroot Wild’s broader mission weaves art and ecology together, aiming to foster conservation and celebrate birds through mural art at fourteen Ngäbe Indigenous Territory schools, and the presence of Matt’s mural for The Good of the Hive “sparked” that beginning — placing native stingless honeybees, a universal symbol of interconnection and collective health, alongside the birds, pollinators, and indigenous communities that Sparkroot Wild works to protect in one of Costa Rica’s most ecologically rich and culturally significant landscapes.
