Members of Athens band The B-52s collaborated with chimpanzees at a Florida wildlife sanctuary on paintings that are being sold to benefit the charity at an art fair during the Art Basil Miami Beach festival this week, according to CNN.
“Save the Chimps!” explains Kate Pierson, longtime singer with the 80’s-era band, is her passion project, and her devotion to animal welfare goes way back. “In 1988, I got up on the stage at the Animal Rights Music Festival at the Washington Monument holding the hand of a big chimp. It was surreal. I felt a connection.” …
They discovered Save the Chimps after Dan Mathews, a director of the sanctuary, went backstage after a concert last year and invited Pierson to see it. The sanctuary “is acres and acres,” said Pierson, and a lush, grassy home to its great apes. “Some of them climb, some of them like lolling around in hammocks — then there are the chimps that want to paint.”
Band members Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Fred Schneider primed canvases in the colors of The B-52s’ album covers, then let the chimps paint over them. The abstract-style paintings are priced at $1,000-$10,000 apiece, and posters are available for $52.
Save the Chimps is home to more than 220 of the primates that were rescued from pet ownership, laboratories and the entertainment industry.
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