Westerly― As 13-year-old Hadley Nunes finished putting blue paint on a shark-shaped piece of cardboard in the United Theatre gallery Sunday, she said she was excited to see the work hanging in the gallery’s new art show.

United Theatre Executive Director Carly Callahan said the new show, known as “Coral Canvas: Art for Ocean’s Sake,” is a collaborative effort involving the theater, Mystic Aquarium and artists in the community to increase the public’s understanding of the plight of coral reefs, and bring attention to a new project by the aquarium that hopes to help save coral reefs, vital ecosystems that support marine life and biodiversity.

“It’s of absolutely critical importance that the reefs are preserved and saved,” Callahan said Sunday, at a public workshop where the community came to make art to contribute to the show. “And that we recognize how perilous of a condition this is.”

According to a Mystic Aquarium placard adorning one wall of the gallery, the coral reeds are “disappearing at an alarming rate, with half of all coral reefs lost since the 1950s.”

“Today, 36% of reef-building corals are threatened with extinction,” it reads. “And if no significant changes are made, coral reefs could disappear by 2070.”

Threats affecting coral reefs include warmer ocean temperatures ― which can lead to coral bleaching, or algae being expelled from the corals’ tissues causing it to turn white ― acidification of ocean water, physical damage, pollution, disease, overfishing and coral harvesting, the aquarium says.

The aquarium has joined a nationwide Association of Zoos and Aquariums program known as the SAFE coral program in which the association is working with its members, partners and communities to help repopulate species of Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean coral, according to a release from the United.

Mystic Aquarium, for its part in that effort, will build a $250,000 coral laboratory that will house species of Atlantic coral. Callahan said the aquarium is in the process of fundraising for it.

Once complete, the laboratory will feature large viewing windows, glass doors, interactive displays and informational signage. It will provide space for housing and breeding the coral species, and help educate the public.

Callahan said the United’s gallery show, which will continue through the summer, is also an effort to educate and involve the public in the coral reef discussion.

It first launched in the gallery last month, with an exhibition by local artist Elizabeth Ellenwood that is still on display, Callahan said. Ellenwood’s work includes prints of beach trash she collected and subjected to UV light. The gallery also features live coral and fish, juxtaposed with bleached coral.

The community is adding to the project, Callahan said, using trash and recyclables collected from homes and nearby beaches to create a coral reef installation in the gallery. Westerly High School art teacher John Tedeschi, who is coordinating the community effort to make that reef, pointed to pieces already on the gallery walls that had been contributed by Westerly schools’ students.

Sunday’s workshop invited community members inside to work on art pieces to add to the coral reef. Nunes was one of four children who came to the workshop, along with 27-year-old local artist Deja “Destiny” Perez. Each worked on new fixtures to add to the burgeoning reef, including sharks, octopuses and coral itself.

Callahan, between hot-gluing pieces of plastic for a reef, said the theater wanted to get young people engaged with the coral issue, and take some sort of action “vis-a-vis” art.

Callahan said no second workshop is planned yet. But the theater will be posting examples of pieces of the reef installation to social media, with the hope that it will encourage community members to make their own items for it at home, and submit them to the gallery.

“I want them to reimagine what we look at is trash, and repurpose it using paint, glue, whatever they can imagine to make it into something that is a beautiful piece of sea life,” she said. “Whether that is coral, or fish, or seaweed or anything.”

Any art submitted will be used to populate the gallery over the rest of the summer, Callahan said.

“And then at the top of September, we’re going to have essentially a party celebrating the work that’s been done in the community to help protect the coral reefs,” she added.

d.drainville@theday.com