Beauty rises from a Virginia prison where violence against suffragists changed history
LORTON, Va. - The windows in Martin Cervantez's towering artworks never look the same, their gentle colors changing subtly with the arc of the sun.
They also never look like what they once were: tower windows from which guards watched inmates at the notorious Lorton Reformatory.
Those windows are emblematic of the change from correction facility to a haven for artists called the Workhouse Arts Center, created from the bones of the onetime reformatory in southern Fairfax County, outside the nation's capital.
The beauty of the artworks made here and the energy that accompanies their creation are a surprise in a place where ugly events once were the norm, including one so horrifying it was called the Night of Terror.
Not ringing a bell? Not surprising. But what happened here on Nov. 14, 1917 - it was called the Occoquan Workhouse then - changed U.S. history.
Teddy Roosevelt could never have imagined that the workhouse he had created in 1910
