Matti Jackson and Pepper Ann Hunt are the picture of concentration as they paint papier-mache masks in the messy, noisy confusion of an art class at the Rose Street Community Center.
Motown tunes play too loud on the boombox in the corner. Balloons are being popped inside the hard paper shells. Everybody jumps back and chairs fall when somebody spills paint at a nearby table.
But Matti and Pepper Ann are undisturbed. It's as if they are someplace else.
"My mind is back there. In kindergarten. All the adult stuff just goes away," says Matti.
"Back to a time when you had no worries," says Pepper Ann. "You can forget for a while that you have to leave here and go home."
This is no preschool art class and these two friends are nobody's toddlers. Pepper Ann has a grown daughter and Matti is a grandmother. But while they are in Randi Pupkin's art class, they are kids again.
Randi Pupkin is a runaway lawyer who now spends her days bringing art classes to students like those at the Rose Street Community Center - the ones who appreciate it most, who need it most: homeless mothers and children, old people lost in the fog of Alzheimer's, abandoned teen-age boys, troubled students, the poor and the ones battling addiction or despair .
"This was the messiest day ever," she says, brushing her dark hair out of her eyes with the backs of her gooey hands. But behind her sigh of good-natured resignation is the sustained enthusiasm of someone younger than her 40 years. She comes to Rose Street dressed for the mess, in jeans and a work shirt and wearing an apron.
"This is my favorite class," she says. "These are just the nicest people. And they really care about what we do. They aren't kids who are mad because they have to take an art class."
There are more than 20 students crammed into the tiny rowhouse and working at four 8-foot tables, but she is unfazed by the cheerful chaos around her. "This isn't about art," says this mother of two young children. "This is about crowd control."
Hanging on the wall behind her is a quilt her students made during an earlier class. The panels carry messages of hope and the power of prayer, but they also carry references to those in prison and those who have died by violence.
The members of Randi Pupkin's art class live in the East Baltimore rowhouses near the Rose Street Community Center, and poverty, crime and addiction are their harsh neighbors. Every day has the potential to be a struggle, a disappointment or a crisis. Except Wednesday, when Miss Randi comes to teach them art.
"I took art classes my whole life, all the way through college," says Pupkin, who grew up in Pikesville and still lives near there. She graduated from Lynchburg College in Virginia and the University of Baltimore Law School.
"But I wanted to help people. That's why I went into law. But I was approaching 40, and I thought, do I want to spend the rest of my life fighting with other lawyers?
"You win and you don't even feel good. You just feel like you've been robbed of time in your life. I wanted to do something that felt better."
In March, 2000, she sold her practice and, with some seed money from her husband, Andrew, a dentist, she started teaching four classes at the House of Ruth for displaced mothers and children; Arden Court, an Alzheimer's facility; and the Kanner and Debuskey group homes for adolescent boys.
She called her classes "Art With a Heart."
She stockpiled traditional art supplies and scavenged for the odd items - doors for one project, shoes for another, chairs for another - and researched African-American artists to use as inspiration.
"I was looking for artists who came to their art late in life and maybe after having had a really rough time," she says. "I wanted my students to get the idea that you never give up hope."
She carries her art into institutions and neighborhoods - into lives - that her semi-privileged upbringing would never have taken her. It unnerves her husband and the grandparents of her children, Ethan, 6, and Jessica, 9, who have gone along to help her in some of her classes. Most of her women friends, though supportive, have never asked to see what she does.
"I feel lucky to know that this exists," she says of the troubled lives she touches. "We live in a world where nobody looks and that's why nothing changes."
Program has grown
"Art With a Heart" has grown to include eight paid part-time teachers and a program coordinator, with classes at nine different locations.
Pupkin received nonprofit status and has begun applying for the grants she needs to cover costs for a dozen classes next year, which could reach $75,000 - a far cry from the $6,000 she pulled together to buy materials in her first year.
Her classroom supplies have overrun the dining room, the basement and a shed in the back yard. She knows she will have to rent space soon. "Art With a Heart" will have to be "Art with a Head for Business" if Pupkin is going to reach all the people she believes art can heal.
But that's business, and on this Wednesday morning, she is as focused on her students as Matti and Pepper Ann are on their masks. She is also too busy to think about how small a dab of paint she is applying to the mountain of unhappiness out there.
"I know I am not going to fix these peoples' lives," she says. (Although she has brought a few students to her husband the dentist and her father-in-law the doctor.)
"Fixing their lives isn't my purpose. The purpose is to bring them a little joy and a little relief and to teach something."
Pupkin says you don't have to be an artist to do what she does. "You just have to be able to deal with people." And she is very good at that.
"There was a reluctance at first," says Clayton Guyton, who runs the Rose Street Community Center. "It was like a joke. 'What are we gonna do? Finger-paint?'
"But she is just so charismatic. It makes our day. Now we can't do without it," says Guyton.
Most of Pupkin's Wednesday morning art students have spent the previous four hours picking up trash and litter in the parks, alleys and streets in East Baltimore for a modest wage.
"We use our hands on brooms and shovels and bags," says Guyton. "This is a great opportunity to make something with our hands."
"People who have been into drugs don't really believe they have a creative side," says Leslie Smith, the office manager at Rose Street, and one of Pupkin's more talented students. "This is a stress reliever and a way to relax."
Social therapy
When Pupkin began teaching, she thought the art work itself would be therapeutic, but she has changed her mind.
"The social interaction is more important than I thought," says Pupkin.
Smith agrees: "It brings us together in a different kind of way."
Deep in concentration across the table from Matti Jackson and Pepper Ann Hunt is first-timer Kevin Smith. He has painted on his mask the face of a singer in an old-fashioned barbershop quartet, complete with handlebar mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles cleverly constructed from the reinforced edges of silver ribbon.
A carpenter by trade, he was immediately enthusiastic when the neighborhood grapevine brought him news of the art classes. "When you say art, I say, 'Hey, I'm gonna be on time.' "
He was on time, but he is staying late. It is well past noon when he gently hands over his mask to teaching assistant Jessica Robertshaw, a Maryland Institute College of Art student, to dry until next Wednesday.
Pupkin, splattered with paint and sticky with paper mache goo, isn't in any particular hurry to clean up and go, either.
"It always makes me feel good when they go past the hour," she says.
Put a little art in your heart
If you would like to donate money, art supplies or your time, contact Randi Pupkin by visiting her Web site, www.artwithaheart.net or by mail at P.O. Box 32090, Baltimore, MD 21282.
Spirit of Sharing
Now in its third year, the annual Spirit of Sharing campaign by The Sun raises funds to help needy families in the Baltimore area during the holiday season.
The campaign, administered by Baltimore Sun Charities, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, runs through the end of December. For every dollar contributed, the foundation will contribute another 50 cents, meaning that for each dollar raised, $1.50 will be donated to local nonprofit efforts such as shelters, food banks and fuel funds. Administrative costs are covered, so that 100 percent of all money raised will be distributed to those in need. Donations are tax deductible.
To donate, send a check payable to Baltimore Sun Charities to: Baltimore Sun Spirit of Sharing Campaign, P.O. Box 62150, Baltimore MD 21264-2150. Or donate online at www.sunspot.net/spiritofsharing.
Every donor (except those who wish to remain anonymous) will be acknowledged in the newspaper. The Sun also will publish the list of charities that receive this year's Spirit of Sharing grants.