Ashley Kunz’s daughter Autumn poses in front of one of her mother’s butterfly backgrounds. Photo/special to the Extra.

Here’s a cheerful pick-me-up during these dark days of pandemic, thanks to Moorhead artist Ashley Kunz. Kunz’s mammoth, brightly colored paintings of butterfly wings are on display at the Moorhead Center Mall for the rest of the winter. As they did when she mounted them on her garage door in the Morningside Addition last April, the vivid wings are bringing smiles to passers-by and giving them a great excuse to pose for a happy, holiday portrait.

“I started when Minnesota was under the stay-at-home order last April,” the artist explains. “We were seeing all kinds of people walking, many more than before, just looking for a chance to get out of the house. I thought, ‘How can I bring color and a little joy into their lives?’”

She turned out the first of her now-iconic artworks, and she and her husband hung them on their garage. Over the next six weeks, they took them in at night, then remounted them when the sun was shining. “I’d peek from behind the curtains and see people out there taking pictures … and smiling,” she recalls.

The butterfly house became a neighborhood attraction, so much so that she’d field calls on days when they didn’t see them. But the Kunzes took them down when the weather turned fickle. Center Mall manager Andrew Nielsen spotted her Facebook post about trying to find an indoor site, and the match was made. They hung four very different pairs of wings in the mall just before Thanksgiving in the hallway across from Vic’s Bar and Grill, farther down between Vic’s and Merle Norman Cosmetics, near the new office of the Department of Motor Vehicles, and just north of Jay’s Smokin’ BBQ.

Nielsen has another public art project up his sleeve later this winter. Artists Cory Gillerstein and Jared Froeber of Upper Hand Design are making plans for a full-size mural to be added over coming months on another inside wall. The mural will feature local landmarks set within the letters of a towering “Welcome to Moorhead,” based on the style of tourist postcards back in the day.