Tim Rand | Featured Visual Artist
Life Is Sweet
Tim Rand’s Butterfly Mural at the Palace Theater
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Tim Rand was commissioned by Arts at the Palace to create a mural on the side of the Palace Theater in Hamilton. Completed in May 2021, the large-scale butterfly mural became part of his ongoing Life Is Sweet series, a body of work dedicated to pollinators as symbols of resilience, sacrifice, and hope.
Rand launched Life Is Sweet in March 2020 with a painting of a honey bee - an homage to nature’s essential worker and, in parallel, to the countless essential workers who sustained communities through the pandemic. From there, the project grew rapidly. What began as a way to connect with family - including a mural visible from the kitchen window of his parents’ home for his 100-year-old grandmother - soon spread across Central New York, with murals in Clinton, the Utica Zoo, and Hamilton.
“The bee is nature’s essential worker, with the survival of countless other organisms resting on its wings,” says Rand. “To me, this pandemic was all about how we can came together to help out our neighbors and community as a whole when times were tough.” His Palace Theater mural extends that vision, paying tribute through the symbolic strength of pollinators - creatures whose work often goes unseen, yet upon whom all life depends.
The Palace mural was installed as part of the creation of a native pollinator garden on site, a community project produced by Arts at the Palace and supported by the Central New York Community Foundation and the Mid York Foundation, with materials donated by Golden Artist Colors. The completed work was celebrated with a socially distant outdoor “Garden Jam,” bringing live music, art, and family activities to the community after a year of isolation.
The butterfly mural continues to be a vibrant focal point in downtown Hamilton, welcoming residents and visitors alike. Keep an eye out in 2026 for new plantings in the Arts at the Palace pollinator garden, which will further enrich this living, community-centered artwork.
Rand, who opened TRand Art Studio & Gallery in Clinton in 2011, shares his art locally and nationally. His murals and paintings can be found in private collections and public spaces, from the Adirondack Bank Center in Utica to New England College in New Hampshire.
To see more of Rand’s work and follow the Life Is Sweet project, visit timrandart.com, @timrandart or stop by his studio at 84 Utica Street in Clinton by appointment.
