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Flourish Online Magazine | Summer 2007 |
Renewing Hearts and Minds: One Butterfly at a Time
By Kevin McKenzie
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| “So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. . .” —Pavel Friedman |
The butterfly of Friedman’s poem has come to symbolize the lives of children lost in
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the Holocaust. To commemorate those lives, the Holocaust Museum in Houston, Tex., launched “The Butterfly Project” in 2001 with the announced goal of collecting more than 1.5 million handcrafted butterflies, one for each child victim of the Holocaust. Since then individuals, organizations and schools across the country, including Kennesaw State University, have helped them collect more than 300,000.
Nikki Starz, a freshman art major, is one of thousands of students at KSU, particularly students enrolled in first-year seminar and arts in society classes, who have made butterflies for the project. Starz’s butterfly, however, hasn’t made its way to Houston yet. Instead, it is one of 125 selected for display at the entrance to the current exhibition, “Parallel Journeys: World War II and the Holocaust through the Eyes of Teens,” which Kennesaw State opened at KSU Center in January 2007.
“It feels good to be a tiny piece of something so whole and positive, extremely positive,” said Starz. Initially reluctant to work on the project, Starz said that the more she learned through her research and studies, the more interested she became. “I feel like I should know more. Everybody should know more,” she said.
Connecting with all ages
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| A local student with her butterfly |
One of the benefits of the butterfly exhibition is its appeal to a broad audience, including kindergartners who tour the exhibition with elementary school groups. “The project really focuses on the history of children,” said Catherine Lewis, associate professor of history at KSU, director of the Holocaust Education Program, and curator of Parallel Journeys. “But because it is also focused on fine arts, it gave us another way to look at the Holocaust that wasn’t purely historical.”
The Butterfly Project was initially brought to Kennesaw State in the fall of 2005 by Assistant Professors of Art Natasha Lovelace and Charlotte Collins. The depth of students’ insight impressed both professors. “It is important that students have a personal thought about it, do their own research, to give their project their own voice,” said Collins. “Such opportunities to engage in critical thinking connect students to this difficult subject in a way they were not connected before.”
Each student connected in an individual manner. “I created my butterfly for young girls who did not reach womanhood, who never got to experience all of the things that a woman needs to experience,” said Starz, who used a Barbie doll torso for her butterfly’s body.
The Butterfly Project also teaches students an important lesson in the role of arts in society, said participating student Carissa Bulau. “I definitely feel that the arts can make a difference in the world. Art is meant to provoke a feeling in the viewer’s heart, and if this feeling moves them to act, then the artist did her job.”
Community contributions
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| Handcrafted butterflies from "The Butterfly Project" |
Programming associated with the exhibit gives visitors their own opportunity to contribute to the project. “We have many visitors who loop back to the butterflies again after going through the exhibit and ask to contribute a butterfly,” said Lewis.
Community outreach is also increasing awareness of the project. Hundreds of students from area schools have been inspired to create butterflies and their teachers are incorporating the project into their character education lessons.
“There’s nothing we can do to eradicate what happened,” said Collins, “but what we can do is be passionate about it and be involved.”
