Mary Brown is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, a youth development program that serves young African American males living in Washington, DC. LPTM’s continuing goal is to nurture, embrace, encourage, and elevate African American boys and young men.  Daily participation in LPTM’s artistic, academic, spiritual, and mentoring activities help turn the many challenges in the lives of these boys into opportunities for success, self-reliance, and resiliency.

About Mary Brown from the Meyer Foundation website:

Ms. Brown has spent over 22 years of her life serving as a tireless advocate for countless youth. Ms. Brown is currently the Executive Director of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, Inc, an internationally acclaimed arts-based youth development organization serving boys and young men living in low-income and public housing East of the Anacostia River.

Mary Brown received her B.S. from Xavier University in Biology. Over the years, Ms. Brown has been widely honored for her efforts. She has received the Mayor’s Spirit of Neighborhood Action Award; the Augusta Savage Arts Leadership Award; the Monica Davis Show Award for Community Service; the 2007 Washington, DC Economic Partnership Innovators Award; and she was inducted into the Leadership Greater Washington class of 2009. She serves as Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts and is a member of the Board of Directors for the See Forever Foundation/Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools and the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative. Ms. Brown has been selected to be inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Sponsors at Morehouse College based on her unique achievement of excellence in her chosen field, a significant contribution to the Ward 7 Community of Washington DC and society, and the demonstration of ethical leadership throughout her life.

“We help define for the boys something that so often is not defined,” says Mary. “Kids hear ‘just do it’ or ‘you have the power’ but nobody’s ever really defined what their power is. We tell them exactly what their power is. We say, ‘Your power lies in your thoughts, your words, and your actions.’ Over time they really begin to ask ‘what am I listening to? What am I, what are my eyes taking in? How is that being translated in terms of how I’m acting? Is it making me a better person?”

About Life Pieces to Masterpieces from the Meyer Foundation website:

It all began when Mary Brown and her former husband Larry Quick caught a group of four or five boys breaking windows outside of the youth summer program where Mary worked. This same group of kids had “given chase” – pulling pranks so adults would run after them – for weeks outside of the building. Quick understood these boys; he had been one of them in his youth. He told Mary that what the boys really wanted was “in”—they wanted to be part of the program inside. Soon after the incident the boys began waiting for Larry each day; eventually, he began escorting them into the building. That was the start of Life Pieces to Masterpieces and its work with “boys on the edge.”

Fourteen years later, this small after-school program has become a multifaceted youth development organization with over 200 young African American males between the ages of 3 and 21, most of whom come from public housing east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Over half of the “apprentices,” as they are called, are not attending school; many have been victims of abuse or neglect; and the majority face challenges within their households and neighborhoods—domestic violence, substance abuse, illiteracy and unemployment. More than 90 percent have no positive male role model present in the home.

The apprentices attend the program five to six days each week for three to five hours each day where they participate in an arts-based curriculum that also includes athletics, leadership training, and meditation. The name Life Pieces comes from the unique collaborative art projects they create: apprentices paint a canvas, cut it into various shapes, and sew the pieces together as a means of processing real-life experiences.

The accomplishments are significant. Approximately 90 percent of the boys have shown improved behavior at home and in school and 75 percent have significantly increased their grades. Apprentices have created more than 1,000 pieces of art that have been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally.

See also: Life Pieces Artworks, which will soon be available for purchase online.

Photo credit: Meyer Foundation