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Laura Smith is a U.S. artist who is returning for her third year as an ArtCorps Artist. Working in El Salvador with FUNDAHMER, Laura’s experience combines arts education and ceramics. She uses natural materials such as clay, fibers and charcoal, which are easily accessible in El Salvador, and enjoys facilitating new uses and appreciation for these local materials that were not previously valued. Laura is inspired by children in art-making and seeks to be as present and free in her work and teaching as children are in their approach to art. During her first two years in El Salvador, she began to create art with social and cultural content and learned how one’s vision can be simplified into symbols with charcoal, clay and collage.

Before joining ArtCorps, Laura served as an the Arts Director and Ceramic Teacher at an arts camp and volunteered in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, in local food pantries in New England and with school children and youth groups in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Laura sees her third year with ArtCorps as the culmination of her direct work in the communities that FUNDAHMER serves and  the her training of FUNDAHMER staff in creative facilitation. This year, as she expands on the knowledge she has gained and builds on the trust she has earned from individuals and communities, Laura feels especially effective in her role as ArtCorps Artist.

Read Boston Globe Interview with ArtCorps Artist Laura Smith

“Art and creativity can flow naturally through all beings if we know how to awaken them and open ourselves to being vehicles of expression.”

At the 2010 mid-year retreat, Laura shared this reflection on her journey as an artist for social change: "The tools that we begin to use here [in Central America] are the same tools that we are going to need when we return to our home countries to transform the society there."

Murals of Memory from Galen Brown | 3004 Studios on Vimeo.