MURFREESBORO, TN — What began in 2015 as a crayon drawing of a horse that may have been a dog has expanded into a full-surface installation covering the entire front, both sides, and approximately four inches of the top of the Decker family refrigerator, structural engineers confirmed Thursday.
Greg Decker, 44, maintains that every piece submitted by his three children — now ages 11, 14, and 17 — remains on display out of what he describes as an “open-door curatorial policy.” The refrigerator door itself has not been visible since the Obama administration. The family locates it by feel.
“I know where the handle is,” Decker said, gesturing confidently toward a laminated finger-painted sunset from 2018. “It’s right behind the Thanksgiving turkey from second grade. Makayla’s, not Connor’s. Connor’s is on the left side, under the periodic table poem.”
“He tried to take down a spelling test from 2019 and I cried for twenty minutes. So now we just… add.” — Julie Decker, 42, wife
The family’s oldest child, Connor, 17, confirmed he submitted a geometry quiz in October as “an experiment” to see if his father would hang it. It went up the same afternoon with two magnets and a Post-it note reading “GENIUS.”
A refrigerator technician dispatched for a routine maintenance call last spring filed an incident report after being unable to locate the appliance’s model number. The report lists the unit’s exterior condition as “indeterminate.”
At press time, Decker had received Makayla’s sixth-grade spring art project — a 22-inch papier-mâché owl — and was seen measuring the top of the refrigerator with a tape measure and quiet determination.
