Name/Title
Mary Guthrie - Electric Flower - Laguna Honda HospitalDescription
"There is a gift of genius in every heart and mind. If that which now was hidden we would take the time to find.“
With her gentle smile and blue eyes shining, Mary likes to recite these words from a poem she wrote as a young mother going through a divorce. She has used the difficulties she's faced in her life to find her own "gift of genius." Born in Canada in 1946,she married at the age of sixteen to a young serviceman and eventually, realizing a difficult future for her family, gave up her four children to be raised in foster homes. She subsequently spent over twenty years on the streets of San Francisco, living in local parks, where she listened to other people's stories, discovered the beauty of nature and developed a passion for trees. "God showed me the sunsets and clouds," she says. A laundromat offered her shelter at times and she periodically helped out at the Shamrock Bar. To this day, her bible is her constant companion.Mary, who describes herself as a seeker and thinker, did some art in grammar and high school and is an avid photographer, especially of her beloved trees, but she attributes her current art to the AWE staff at Laguna Honda. "When I first started," she says, "I didn't think I could do it.
