2A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17. 2005
What do you THINK
BY MEGAN PENROD
editor@kansan.com
KANSAN CORRESPONDENT
What are your plans for Thanksgiving break?
"I'm going home and hanging out with my mommy and the rest of my family. We'll eat turkey, and my uncle will probably make my mom mad just like every other year." Lucas Lyn Tongke freshme
"I'm going home. Eating turkey."
Heather Bratton, DseOta freshman
"I'm picking up my boyfriend at K-State so he can drive me back, and then I'm going home and eating lots of turkey!"
Heidi Hepp, Liberal senior
"I'm going home and spending time with friends and family."
Kathleen Murray,
Overland Park freshman
PEOPLE
Matthew McConaughey named 'sexiest man' by People magazine
NEWYORK — Matthew McConaughey has been named the "sexiest man alive" by People magazine.
The actor is pictured on the cover of People's annual issue, on newsstands Friday. For the 36-year-old McConaughey, it's a clear sign that his career is in the midst of an upturn — and that his girlfriend, Penelope Cruz, may be rubbing off on him.
"Now I've made it," he told the magazine. "Wait until you see the roles I could take after this. You're going to see my gut hanging over, plus 22 (pounds). It'll be a whole new kind of sexy!"
McConaughey is the 20th "sexiest man" for People, who first bequeathed the honor to Mel Gibson in 1985. The magazine credited McConaughey's "haping helping of Texas's finest Southern charm" for the choice.
But he says the part of the title that he's proud of isn't "sexiest": "I like the 'alive' part."
-The Associated Press
PROFILE
Artist finds light
Dark experiences help create works of hope
BY FRANK TANKARD
ftankard@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Toni Brou saunters through the empty art gallery, quietly examining the work. She browses through the writings posted next to each piece in the collection, which tell the sad story that inspired it.
Contributed photo from Toni Brou
She reads about the death of the artist's father and husband a year apart — leaving the artist alone to raise her three young boys — and about the dying woman who changed the artist's life.
Brou reflects on the collection later in the afternoon at a shaded table behind the Kansas Union, "It's just hard to believe that was my life."
Much has changed since Brou lost her father and then her husband, who died five years ago Friday. She has sunk to the depths and emerged, brush in hand, to create a simple, uplifting collection of art. Her mantra: "The sun always rises."
"When I was a KU student and didn't have any worries, my work was unhappy," said Brou, a 1990 graduate and senior administrative assistant at the Natural History Museum. "It's almost like I had to lose a lot to appreciate the little things and find the joy in them."
Toni Brou's "Roll with it, Babyl" is a mixed-media piece on a salvaged hubcap. Brou's work is on display until Wednesday at the Student Union Activities art gallery in the Kansas Union. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Her work depicts smiling suns and moons made from polymer clays and papier-maché. As a tribute to her father, an amateur creator of "junk art," she often mounts the pieces on hub caps and incorporates ceiling fan parts, glass plates, ends of cans and other discarded junk into her art.
Her pieces hang in a dozen galleries across the country, and a collection called "It's Our Scars That Make Us Stronger" is being displayed until Wednesday at the Student Union Activities art gallery in the Kansas Union.
"The overriding theme is hope," Brou, 39, said. "The timing was tragic, but I don't feel like my life is tragic. I feel really, blessed."
Dark days
Seven years ago, when Brou's husband, Marcel, learned he had liver cancer, blessed wasn't one of the words that came to her mind.
Seven months after Marcel's diagnosis, Brou became pregnant with their third child. She and Marcel
Over the course of two years the cancer spread — first to his lungs, then to his brain. He went through a liver re-sectioning, three types of chemotherapy, brain surgery and brain radiation. Sometimes the treatments seemed to be working. Sometimes they didn't.
would drive together to St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., where she would have prenatal checkups while he went to the oncologist.
Months later, in Nov. 1999, Brou's father died of heart failure at the age of 70. A few days later, she gave birth to her third son.
As she sat in her hospital bed a day or two after giving birth. Marcel came to her with the news he'd just received from his doctor. The chemotherany wasn't working.
Half a year later, they were at Midland Hospice in Topeka, where Marcel lived out his last four months. She felt buried.
"My husband was dying and I was mad," she said. "I thought everybody had a better life than I did."
Then, from her hole in the ground, an arm came to lift her out. It came in the form of a sick woman in her early 50s being pushed in a wheelchair at the hospice. Brou overheard the woman calmly say, "I am so blessed, I am so blessed."
she had to have spent her time here on earth very wisely.
It probably seemed like an ordinary moment. But not to Brou. She saw something deep inside the woman.
"I think my jaw dropped," she said. "Her sincerity put things in perspective to me. To be at such peace,
The woman, Renee Carr, died of a brain tumor a few days later. Marcel died also, days before their youngest son's first birthday. Brou never got an opportunity to talk to the woman. She didn't need to.
"In just a few seconds, she taught me everything I needed to know about having a grateful heart," she said.
Finding the sun
After Marcel died, Brou started making up for lost time with her three boys. Students at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center had been volunteering to watch after them while she was taking care of Marcel, and she realized they'd been nearly parentless.
She began to rely on Franklin, Frederick and Freeman — now 10, 7 and 5 years old — to give her strength. Franklin, the logical, scientific one, is the only one who can remember his father. Frederick, the one who's said he wanted to be an artist, looks most like him. Freeman, the youngest, is the one who bounces off the walls.
She also started creating the colorful suns and moons. With the woman from the hospice in mind,
she developed her mantra, "The sun always rises."
She started sending her work to dealers across the country, and got some enthusiastic responses. Michelle Zjala Winter, co-owner of The Gift Itself, an art gallery in Green Bay, Wis., was one of the gallery owners who immediately took to her work.
"She found inspiration in working again and working with her hands," she said. "The process of that really helped her work through it, that whole of idea of turning something that's absolutely heart-wrenching into something that can lift others up."
In June, Brou took a temporary job at the Natural History Museum. It lasts until the end of the semester, when the woman she replaced comes back from maternity leave. She isn't sure what she's going to do after that, but she wants to stay on at the University.
On Oct. 30, two days before her art was to go up in the Union, her mother died. She could have postponed the opening of the exhibition, but she decided not to. It fit with the message of her work to go on.
"The sun always rises," she said. "Things get better."
— Edited by Tricia Masenthin
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