Richard Roberts is on a mission to find talent.
For the fourth consecutive year, Roberts, owner of R. Roberts Gallery in Avondale, will be hosting a fundraiser Friday and Saturday for Greenwood School, which helps developmentally challenged children struggling with dylesxia, attention deficit disorder or other learning disabilities.
“In every group of children there is hidden talent,” said Roberts. “My nephew has dyslexic tendencies, but he is good in dealing with science and math. In some of these kids there is a well of talent.”
The brainchild of Burger King executive David Stein and retired CSX executive Pete Carpenter, the first fundraiser enlisted the talent of artist Mackenzie Thorpe, who is dyslexic.Relatively unknown when he was part of the first fundraiser, Thorpe in now popular internationally.
“We were one of the first galleries to handle Mackenzie or hold an exhibition of his work,” said Roberts. “Since then he’s become tremendously popular. At the Gas House at the Birmingham Museum [in England] he had a one-man show in February with approximately 180 paintings. They all sold.”
Reared in a working class home in an industrial, northern England town, Thorpe will make an appearance at Greenwood today to discuss overcoming adversity and self-expression with the school children.
“We use him [Thorpe] as an example of how you can succeed,” said Roberts. “He had problems learning and reading but the one thing he could do was draw.”
Thorpe will bring two life-sized replicas of his sculpture “Life” as part of the fundraiser. One will be a finished piece and the other will be blank, which will be painted by the children at Greenwood.
“If somebody buys the pair, we will donate the profits to the school. It is my intention that the piece to be painted by the kids will go to the school,” said Roberts.
Serving 50 students from kindergarten to the sixth grade and 30 teenagers, the intent of the curriculum is to ease the students back into the mainstream school system utilizing low student-teacher ratios. Some of the school’s attendees have even gone on to college.
“I think it helped the kids’ self-esteem tremendously,” said Roberts of Thorpe’s influence. “You’re going to be good at something. There are things you can do, things you can contribute. If you have difficulty processing information, it’s difficult to stay up with the rest of the kids and kids beat down on other kids.”
Since Roberts became involved with the school, he has raised over $5 million. Because of the effort, Greenwood will now have a permanent home.
Started in the early 1980s, the school has bounced around to several locations. The Haskell Company is constructing a new building in the Regency Square area. It is scheduled to open in January and will be able to accommodate 200 students.
This year’s fundraiser is scheduled for Friday and Saturday from 6:30-9 p.m. at R. Roberts Gallery , with all proceeds going to fund tuition scholarships. About 20 original Thorpe pieces will be on sale.
The fundraisers have contributed about $60,000 to the school over the last three year, but Roberts is a little apprehensive about this year’s effort.
“I would like to see $10-15,000 cash, plus the sale of sculpture, valued at $15,000,” he explained. “We’re still $1 to $2 million short of our goal. It’s a very bad time because of the economy and what happened two weeks ago [the terrorist attacks].”
Roberts, a member of the board of directors for Greenwood, has been operating the gallery since 1994. In the past, his gallery has been involved in charitable efforts with the Cummer Ball , the Cowford Ball and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.