The Hearts Project Foundation

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The Hearts Project Foundation

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A collaborative art project dedicated to all COVID-19 deaths in Arkansas. linktr.ee/covidheartsproject

Share your Story:
heartsprojectfoundation.org/share

10/14/2026

*Arkansas Artist Series
Rosie Rose Designer
Artist and Designer
Eureka Springs

Wish that I had never heard the word coronavirus. So much suffering, upheaval, and disruption. So much sadness. Telling my children again and again, this has never happened ever before in any of our lifetimes. Cancel culture has a whole new meaning. I have never before feared a hug or a piece of food. Or let fear dominate my life.

But through it all a quiet strength emerges. If we can overcome this, there is nothing we cannot do. And a new appreciation forms for kindness, for nature, for humanity. Kids riding by on their bikes and skateboards in the middle of a weekday give me hope. Sunshine on our skin feels warmer. The way the grass continues to grow, as if nothing has changed. Strangers offering to help one another. My husband's arms around me, telling me it's all ok, and the sounds of him bustling in the kitchen all hours of the day. Realizing how much we have missed him.

Soon flowers will bloom and it will be May. And we will have another daughter who will be born innocent, unknowing of the turmoil and sadness the world has passed through during her formation. She'll open her eyes and cry that first baby's breath and the world will start all over again, fresh and new. The planet will turn, and the stars will shine down on us and we will keep on going, because that's what we do. All of existence is in the palms of our hands, waiting to be spun into the threads that form the next chapter of the rich and variegated tapestry of human history.
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Check out Rosie’s fun, eclectic work and give her a follow on:
Instagram.com/rosierosedesigner

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Are you a creative that was living in Arkansas during Covid? If you would like to share your story or your work, see the link in comments!
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#covidart shareyourstory

10/12/2026

When Keith Haring spoke those words about his final masterpiece, The Life of Christ triptych, he was carrying the weight of his own mortality. 💛

Carved just weeks before he passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1990, this bronze and white-gold altar stands as a monument to resilience and eternal hope.

Working through terminal illness, Haring poured his final energy into creating a sanctuary of healing.🖼️

At The Hearts Project Foundation, this is exactly why we create memorial art.

Just like Haring used his iconic style to turn grief into an enduring message of love, our memorial projects build a bridge between loss and legacy. Art gives a voice to what hurts, shapes a home for our deepest memories, and reminds us that love outlasts our physical forms.💛

Memorial art isn't just about looking back; it’s an active practice of processing pain, fostering community, and channeling our heaviest heartaches into something beautiful that shines for generations. ✨

📸: Taken at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
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10/07/2026

Arkansas resident Jalissa shared the story of her auntie, who lost her life to COVID-19 while living in Chicago.

“I’ve only met her once in my lifetime. But what I do remember of her is how she was there for me during a difficult time in my life. She will forever remain in my heart.”💛

COVID changed families in ways that can’t always be measured. For Jalissa, her auntie’s life—and the kindness she showed her—continues to matter.

Her memory lives on in the heart of someone she touched.💛

10/04/2026

The last tree in the set of three of COVID’s Ghosts of Christmas Past is “COVID’s Comfortably Numb Christmas.”
Santa, snowmen, reindeer, angels, presents, and red and green surround white hearts falling like snow.❄️

But the black hearts tell another story. 🖤

They represent the continued deaths and the trauma carried by healthcare workers who had to put those experiences away in a mental “black box” just to keep going.

The public health emergency was still ongoing, but the world was ready to move on.
❤️‍🩹

Christmas carried on. So did the grief, the trauma, and the loss.
💛

*Thank you to the team at Scott Frame and Art for all of the work put into the trees and for sharing the video.
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09/30/2026

Art gives us a way to see what we might otherwise miss.🖼️

During COVID, we created in the middle of uncertainty, loss, isolation, and change.
💛
At The Hearts Project Foundation, 13,068 hand-cut hearts became our response to the pandemic—one heart for every Arkansan lost to COVID-19.

🎨

Together, these hearts became more than art. 🫶🏽

They became a visual record of lives lost and a piece of Arkansas history we can see, feel, and never overlook.💛
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09/23/2026

COVID changed us. Creatives documented it.

We’re looking for musicians and creatives who were living in Arkansas during quarantine and the year that followed to share how the pandemic affected their creative lives.

Did you create or perform during COVID—or stop creating altogether? Did it change your work, your perspective, your family, your community, or your life?

We want to hear your story.

🎨 Share your COVID-related creative work
🎶 Share your creative journey
❤️ Share what that time meant to you

We’re collecting the stories and creative work that help document what the pandemic meant to the people of Arkansas.

*If you’re an Arkansas creative, we’d love to hear from you.

Your experience is part of our history.

🔗Link in comments 👇

Image: Pexels.com

09/21/2026

🎨Arkansas Artist Series
Shruti Gupta
Fayetteville

When COVID changed everything, this Arkansas artist found herself spending most of her time at home, trying to adjust to a world that suddenly felt very different. Like many people, she had to find ways to stay busy, stay creative, and get through the uncertainty. 💛

She turned to art. 🖼️

The illustrations she created during quarantine came from her own experience of being confined and looking for ways to stay engaged. Art gave her something to focus on and helped her get through a difficult and unfamiliar time.🖌️

She was also watching her daughter experience COVID from a child’s perspective. Her daughter didn’t understand why she couldn’t go outside, see her friends, or just be a normal kid. To her, “coronavirus” became the reason everything had changed.
Her daughter expressed those feelings through a comic strip about a girl waiting for COVID to be over so she could meet up and play with her brother.🥰

Their artwork captures two different experiences of the same time—an artist finding her own way through quarantine and a child trying to understand why her world had suddenly changed.💛
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09/14/2026

The AIDS Memorial Quilt showed how art can bring people together to honor lives lost and tell the story of a health crisis.
💛
The Hearts Project Foundation is doing something similar with COVID-19—using thousands of paper hearts, artwork, and personal stories to document what Arkansans lived through.
✂
Different health crises.
Different works of art.

Both show how art can become part of our history.
🖼

09/10/2026

It’s easy to see the finished piece.💛

What you don’t always see is everything that goes into making it.

Paper.
Time.
A lot of cutting. ✂
A lot of hands. 👐🏼

This reel gives you a look behind the scenes at the making of the artwork for The Hearts Project Foundation—one piece, one step, one layer at a time.

There’s something pretty powerful about watching an idea become real. 🖼
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09/03/2026

Art can outlive the moment. 🌅

That matters, especially when the moment is something as life-changing as a pandemic.

💛 The Hearts Project brings together artwork and personal stories from across Arkansas to document what COVID-19 meant to all of us.

🖼️ Every artist has a different story to tell—loss, uncertainty, connection, creativity, and the people who helped us get through it.

This is more than an art project. It’s a record of what we lived through and the stories we don’t want to lose.

Create something that will. 🎨

Share YOUR story! Link in Bio.

*If you were an Arkansas resident during the pandemic you are encouraged to particpate!
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Address

1601 Rogers Ave
Fort Smith, AR
72901

Website

http://heartsprojectfoundation.org/, http://heartsprojectfoundation.org/share

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