By Lisa Capobianco Staff Writer Eric Stegmaier’s love for flying creatures and aviation inspired him to start a butterfly garden last year in his new Southington home. As a local artist, looking at nature’s beauty served as a creative source for Stegmaier, who paints in his free time when not working as a senior conservation assistant at the Yale Center for British Art. “I’ve always wanted a nice yard to kind of get the artistic juices flowing, so one of the things that’s always worked for me is nature,” said Stegmaier, who also has experience working as an archaeological illustrator for several excavations in the Middle East. “When [my wife and I] moved into our house, it was a decent yard, but there were certain aspects I wanted to make nicer, and I’ve always had a thing for butterflies and dragonflies.” But Stegmaier’s decision to create a garden would not only drive artistic fuel out of him, but it also served as a site for monarch butterflies. After stumbling upon an online article about the decline of monarch butterflies. Stegmaier decided to create a monarch waystation—a place to offer the butterflies resources needed to create successive generations and to endure [...]
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