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From Modest Heroes, Major Deeds
MARY BROWN: The co-founder of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, center, tickles Antoine Harmon, 8, right, drawing laughter from Antonio Cook, 8. She works with about 200 boys weekly to try to provide them with artistic inspiration and a sense of beauty.
(By Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)
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"I know people hear stories like this," he says, and they decide that there's something extra-special about the giver or that to start such a fund would be beyond their reach.
"But it's somewhere in you to do the right things," Beverly says. "It takes someone to help you find it. And I had my mom."
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Mastering the Art of Possibility
The boys in Mary Brown's group have created more than 1,000 pieces of art and sent their message -- "to change life's challenges into possibilities" -- around the world. Their canvases have been shown to wonks at the World Bank, to artistes at the Smithsonian, to patients and visitors at Children's Hospital, to the haute monde in Paris.
Brown and her former husband started Life Pieces to Masterpieces 12 years ago, hoping to infuse artistic inspiration and a sense of beauty into the sometimes bleak outlook that can accompany life in public and low-income housing.
Her former husband was the artist. He had grown up in public housing. Four years after co-founding Masterpieces, he pulled back, and Brown found herself in charge, besotted by the kids and determined to carry on.
Brown works weekly with almost 200 boys, most of them ages 8 to 18. She sees herself as the "single parent" to them all: an honor, but with drawbacks.
"It's horrible for the dating life," she jokes. Guys ask: You have children? "Yeah, 200," she answers. "Can you handle it? Am I still hot?"
The point of Masterpieces is this, she says: "Everyone comes with a blank canvas. Our stories begin in different ways. We don't choose the family, we're born into it. We don't choose the circumstances we're born into. Those are colors that are chosen for us. But we can choose to take the various stories and create whatever masterpiece.
"You may have a parent who's addicted to various substances. You may have been a victim of abuse yourself. And this is painful, and this is very real, and these are very real colors you are putting on the canvas.
"But let's use all this to create a very powerful masterpiece. Let's not become a victim."
The first time she returns a phone call for this article, Brown is at a hospital with the sister of one of her boys, accompanying the girl as she waits for a CAT scan.
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