Generosity Hero: Art in the Park

"The artist is not a special kind of person;
rather each person is a special kind of artist."
~ Ananda Coomaraswamy

Demetrio O. Braceros nurtures a garden and has carved over 100 pieces of wood sculpture for the Cayuga Street Park in San Francisco.

From the article at Conversations.org... "What is it that you’re doing here so much from your heart? What I remember is this, his reading the situation and summarizing: "I wanted to inspire the kids."

I didn’t get the details about how he was given responsibility for the undeveloped parcel of land on Cayuga Street, but it happened in 1986, twenty years ago. At that time the place was just a raw stand of weeds and unkempt trees. In the neighborhood, he told us, "there were prostitutes, drug dealers and crime. People got killed up there," Demetrio told us, pointing to houses along the southern edge of the park. It was bad.

"I thought to myself, how can I help this place?" he told us. Speaking to Carlo, he tried to explain himself by quoting a biblical reference, "Let there be Light." It was hard to make out the words. Demetrio took Carlo by the arm and we all walked over to another one of his sculptures, a bust which might have been the head of Jesus. It was hard to say, but under it was written, "Let there be Light." Demetrio pointed to it. "There was darkness here," he said. "Evil. It needed light."

"These are not mine," he said, speaking of all the pieces of sculpture he’d made. Across the language barrier I made out something like this: "Whatever this creative ability it is that has been given to me, it is not mine to claim for myself, but to use for the good of all.""