ART TO DYE FOR.

• Author: Edwards, Lynda

The patrons of old cultivated artists in their salons. Parker Washburn does it with her beauty parlors.

Parker Washburn was coming back from a bait shop with a crate of crickets to feed a herd of frogs -- a photographer had asked her to stash them in her Greensboro mansion's garden until he could snap them for a collage -- when she made her latest discovery. She saw a tiny yard fenced with rusty wire and filled with statues made from cut-and-glued Popsicle sticks: animals, people and "well...I wasn't sure."

But she's sure she knows art when she sees it. A waist-high Popsicle-stick vase now sits under her crystal chandelier in a house brimming with paintings, sculpture, weavings and folk art. In an era when successful artists rely on government grants, she is that rarest of breeds: a patron. As owner of Leon's Beauty Salons Inc. and Leon's Beauty School Inc., she has the resources, clout and wall space (her nine Leon's Style salons also serve as galleries) to launch gifted unknowns. "When Parker buys a new artist's work, it gives him a huge boost," Greensboro Artists League Director Susan Andrews says. "She is charismatic and influential enough to be an opinion maker about who is a talent to be collected."

She also uses her avocation to give her business an edge against the national chains' cookie-cutter salons. Leon's markets each of its salons as having a distinct personality with unique, ever-changing artwork to reflect its clientele. "We use direct mail and, if a client misses a month, invitations to see the latest art at his or her favorite salon," Washburn says.

"I love visiting New York and Philadelphia, where well-funded galleries showcase new, local artists, unlike Greensboro. That just convinces me that Greensboro needs an enthusiastic amateur like me who really respects artists' gifts and skills."

She stresses "amateur." For example, when she went back to the stick sculptor's house to discuss displaying his art, she found it abandoned. "I should have made him give me the name of his next of kin or forced him to cough up a name instead of just calling him Popsicle Man." But she adopts artists who labor without benefit of business cards or call-forwarding. "Famous artists don't need my help, so what's fun about collecting them?"

Washburn, 50, has a curator who handles the displays and deals with artists so that she can concentrate on the family business. Her stepfather, Leon Oldham, founded the chain in 1945, selling facials, manicures and hair styles to women. His fortunes boomed in the '60s when he opened a unisex salon at a time when long hair on men was bankrupting barber shops.

The family was more likely to flout society than court it. They adopted AIDS as a cause in 1982, though colleagues warned them the issue would scare off customers. They offered employees...