Holley's Story

My first introduction to Fundred was at the 2008 NAEA conference in New Orleans. Yes Mel Chin gave a dynamic presentation but I immediately recognized this project’s potential for making interdisciplinary classroom connections to content areas beyond art and to help my students make connections to a world beyond their day-to-day reality in an experiential way. I knew focusing my art curriculum on state standards was the only way I would be allowed to teach the Fundred lesson in my classroom.

This project is more than an art project, it is personal. In the first year I had students creating Fundreds in my classrooms the project touched me deeply. One such occasion was introducing the project in a school-wide Fundred making event. I had several students who were relocated from New Orleans, including a pair of 13-year-old twins that had lived in the 9th Ward. These children lost everything in Katrina–their home, their possessions, and most significantly they lost family members. After creating their Fundreds, these twins did not want to donate their artwork. Despite understanding the project, they were very attached to their Fundred creations. One of the twins had drawn a picture of his former house with a hole in the roof, water all around, the two brothers and their mother in a boat. In a wheel chair was a man waving. When I asked the boy to explain, he said that the waving man was his uncle waving good-bye because there wasn’t room in the boat for him. As he placed the Fundred in his pocket the boy explained he was keeping it because he now had a picture of his uncle. That is when I knew there was more to the Fundred project than I had planned or ever expected.

Fundred is not just a "fun" activity or solely about helping the residents of New Orleans. This is a project where art, as the catalyst, joined with science can change the health and welfare of other communities and our society. Every day my students are bombarded with negative media about the world. This project is about hope for the future and offers students opportunity to contribute to that positive change by creating a simple Fundred. It has touched my students as it has touched me.

Holley Smothers
Jefferson City, Missouri
2007 National Art Education Association (NAEA)
Western Region Middle Level Teacher of the Year and Missouri Art Education Association (MAEA)
Council Committee Chairman of Curriculum