O - The Oprah Magazine - July 2004 Page 152

Gail Nathan

When artist Gail Nathan was a girl in the Bronx, the borough was full of tree-lined streets, small shops, and charming parks - one with the Bronx river curving through it. By the time Nathan was an adult, President Carter spoke of the devastation of the South Bronx. Like others, Nathan fled. She eventually settled in Virginia.

"As idyllic as my life in the South was,", she says, "I knew I wouldn't stay forever." In 1998 Nathan fell in love with a Bronx-based artist and moved back to New York City. Their only problem was that she needed a job. The week Nathan unpacked, the Bronx River Art Center, which offers art and environmental programs to borough residents, advertised for an executive director. Even though she had no corporate financial experience, Nathan applied. "All I could tell the interview committee was that I'd never been in debt or bounced a check," she says.

She got the job and discovered the center's budget would challenge her penny-pinching abilities. To cheer herself up, Nathan went to a fancy boutique. In the linens department, she had a eureka moment: "Sachets!"

Nathan asked her staff and art students to photograph the Bronx River, which is a lot cleaner than many people imagine. They transfered the images onto fabric and filled the sachets with herbs from a Cape Cod distirbutor. (This spring, volunteers planted lavender, chamomile, and spearmint in the community garden on the banks of the river; they'll use the harvest in the sachets.)

The center's product line - which has alrady expanded to include eye pillows - is available through its Web site (bronxriverart.org), and Nathan plans to expand to spas, salons, and specialty shops. She'll use the profits to employ residents; offer more classes in printmaking, ceramics, and environmental studies; and, as she says, "change the mind-set of anyone who still thinks the Bronx is a wasteland."