By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ellen Ganson and Marcia Levitas (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

Ellen Ganson transformed a breast cancer diagnosis into a message of hope for other women battling the disease.

Marcia Levitas and other artists transform ugly old bricks into whimsical, poignant, bittersweet works of art.

Ganson and Levitas, old friends and cancer survivors, have the same mission. Sunday's Breast Cancer Brick Silent Auction is all about making something beautiful from wreckage and remnants, whether it's the aftermath of cancer or the rubble of demolished buildings.

"I see it as making something good out of something really bad," says Ganson, 46, of Montgomery.

In a roundabout way, it all started with Hurricane Hugo.

The summer before she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Ganson and her family visited Charleston, S.C., and its Rainbow Row district. One of the shops she visited featured brightly decorated bricks from buildings destroyed by the 1989 hurricane.

She bought a brick and put it in the front garden near the door of her home.

In October 1996, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. On her way back and forth to doctors' appointments, she kept passing the Charleston brick.

The brick started her thinking about the Charleston trip and the way some small part of the city's history had been salvaged from the hurricane.

"It was the whole idea of taking torn-down buildings and turning them into artwork," she says.

Then one day, she was talking to her mother about chemotherapy.

"I said, 'I feel like someone hit me with a ton of bricks,' " she says.

The light bulb came on; she called Levitas, a childhood friend of her mother's, and the two of them decided it was time to start hitting back.

Levitas decorated 15 or 20 bricks for the first batch. She and Ganson decided to sell them through a beauty salon and give the money to the Breast Cancer Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, now the sponsor of the brick auction.

"The first day, they were all gone," Ganson says.

Levitas, a former fashion artist, started calling friends, who called other friends, and now dozens of artists from throughout Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are involved. One artist sends a brick every year from Israel. Some of the artists, like Levitas, are breast cancer survivors. Others have lost mothers, sisters, wives, friends to the disease. None of the artists asked to decorate a brick for the auction has ever refused, Ganson says.

Even nonartists have helped.

One of the bricks in this year's auction was decorated by orangutans at the Cincinnati Zoo. Zoo workers want to get involved because a zoo volunteer had succumbed to breast cancer. An artist gave one orangutan the brick, which the ape promptly threw against a wall. Two other orangutans picked up the pieces and the paint a zoo volunteer had provided. "One painted it with its hands. One painted it with its toes. And (the volunteer) mounted the pieces on another brick with a picture of the orangutans," Ganson says.

The first three auctions raised close to $100,000 for breast cancer research and advocacy. The alliance is one of the organizations on the board of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a lobbying group that calls on Washington for greater funding for treatment and research.

"It's great, because now Cincinnati has a voice," Ganson says.

Ganson learned she had cancer after she felt a lump in her left breast. By the time she was diagnosed, the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. She underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy.

A few years later, Ganson's other breast was removed, in case the cancer returned.

Seven years after her diagnosis, it hasn't come back.

Ganson's doctor still checks regularly for signs of the disease. And Ganson tells every woman she meets about the importance of self-exams and mammography.

"I ask everyone, 'Are you getting yourself checked? Are you being aggressive?' You have to be. At this point, there's no cure. (Early detection) is where it's at," she says.

Levitas, now 77, of Amberley Village, had a year-old baby at home when she learned she had breast cancer. "I just went in to be checked, and the next thing I knew, I was in the hospital."

Five years later, doctors found cancer in her lymph nodes, and she had a second mastectomy.

When Levitas, a 36-year-survivor, was diagnosed, women didn't talk about breast cancer. But she and a few other women were active in Reach to Recovery, an American Cancer Society program, in its early years.

"When I started with this, we didn't have the OK from the doctors to go and visit (other breast cancer patients) but we were determined that we were going to do it anyway," Levitas says.

Levitas says that without the support from friends and family, she might not have made it through two rounds with breast cancer.

"I really feel that's what helped me. ... For people who don't have what I had, that support, it's a little harder," she says.

Expecting to win the fight helps, too, Levitas says.

"We were very positive" when she was diagnosed, she says.

"It sounds silly, I know. But you have to have a positive attitude. That's how I felt. And you just never give up. It's as simple as that. It doesn't always work; I know that. But it worked for me," Levitas says. "I knew one woman who just gave up. I just think you can't do that. You fight it. It sounds ridiculous, because it doesn't happen that way. But you do what you do everyday and you don't change your lifestyle."

Ganson and Levitas have made the brick auction their cause. It's a labor of love for them and the artists who donate their work.

"It's just overwhelming, because it's taken off so and been so successful," Levitas says. "We're trying to get other cities to start their own brick auctions because it's been so successful."

Her first brick featured flowers. "This time, I painted a shoe and put flowers coming out of the shoe. I like using beads and trying different things."

She's also using pieces from miniature tea sets she bought for her granddaughters. The girls weren't interested in the tea sets, but Levitas says they make nice bricks.

Ganson has never decorated a brick. "I'm not an artist," she says. "I'm an organizer."

This year's auction will include a brick painted by her sister, dentist and breast cancer survivor Susan Bernstein.

"I've been very blessed. I've come through this. Every year at the Race for the Cure, I see women who are not doing so well, and that gives me the drive to keep going," Ganson says. "I'm doing this for my children. I'm doing this because I want a cure to be found."

The Fourth Annual Breast Cancer Brick Silent Auction is 1-4 p.m. Sunday at the Shops at Harper's Point, 11330 Montgomery Road in Symmes Township.

Admission is free. Proceeds benefit the Breast Cancer Alliance of Greater Cincinnati.

For more information, visit www.bcacincy.org and click on the "Events" button.

E-mail pofarrell@enquirer.com