Our Story

A Million Smocks was created out of a recent tragedy in our nation. Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of people and the bulk of those men, women, and children were bussed into the Houston Astrodome in Texas. Our co-founder, Rachelle Omenson, an art teacher, flew to Houston to create a temporary space where the children could make art and express themselves during such a crisis. The whole story can be found here.

Upon returning from Houston, Ms. Omenson and her colleague Erika Gehringer decided to further this type of "guerrilla artfare" and funnel the talents and time of area art teachers into helping the local community.

Using local Girl Scout troops, high school art honor societies, and university level, service learning students, as volunteer members of A Million Smocks, we visit shelters, senior spaces and underfunded schools to deliver a few hours of much-needed art expression and creativity.

We will be collecting supplies from as many sources as possible so that the budding artists out there will have a large collection of media from which to choose.

Our goal is to have a million art teachers in a million smocks dedicating their energy to helping people have more art in their lives.