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GREENSBORO - His father and mother know him as Brian Wilson.

He's their only child, the creative one. He played with Matchbox cars in the woods and in his backyard in Rockingham County, where he saw trees as the jungle and shadowy shapes as tigers, lions and bears.

He was surrounded by relatives who made baskets out of honeysuckle vine and doilies out of tough tobacco thread. He and his dad built model cars. He and his mother built his imagination with crayons and books.

You see it on the family's refrigerator. It's a quote Brian's mother, Carolyn, discovered when he was little. She wrote it on typing paper, this quote from Mark Twain, the 19th-century writer Brian loved to read growing up.

Today, the paper has browned with age. But Brian's mother still believes it.

So does Brian.

"Don't part with your illusions,'' the quote reads. "When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.''

That brings us to Brian's latest creative venture. It's along Tate Street near UNCG, a street of poets and panhandlers, in a small storefront where Brian goes by Adrian Penn, his pen name, and wears boots spray-painted silver.

In the front window, you'll see Lionel Richie in parachute pants, John Travolta in tight pants and Eddie Murphy in fat pants, along with a bright yellow bumper sticker that reads: "Fight Prime Time ... Read A Book.''

Then, there are the homemade signs.

"Local Music, Where In GSO???? Here! Sweet!''

"If You Think Our Window Is Funny, You Should See Us!''

You just have to walk in.

In the back, you'll discover Greensboro's newest art gallery. That is, if you get that far.

Up front is a yard sale for the mind: DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, comic books, vinyl records, knitted scarves and small felt whales.

In a cardboard box, within a few flips of one another, are albums from The Culture Club and The Partridge Family.

On wooden shelves, below posters of writer Jack Kerouac and actress Audrey Hepburn, are books on everything from health to poetry.

By the cash register is Brian Wilson, now known as Adrian Penn. He sits underneath yet another homemade sign - "With Your Donation You're Helping Us Pay Our Rent One Dollar At A Time.''

He tries to break even. He hasn't. And he's been open since September.

Penn already works full time at Ed McKay Books, the city's popular store that sells used books and CDs. But he spends almost every other waking minute at the place he calls Maya Gallery, with his girlfriend, Katie Johnson, and two other volunteers.

Penn is no stranger to the city's creative scene. For at least the past decade, he has played in bands, organized a creative writing group and run open mike nights at Border's and Tate Street Coffee House.

He's a UNCG graduate, with degrees in religious studies and studio art. He's a poet, writer, musician and artist who talks in a soft Southern drawl, wears purple-striped shoelaces and dyes his hair purple or blue or blonde.

And now, he's opened on Tate something he's thought about for at least three years - a place where musicians can perform, artists can exhibit and people can stumble onto something that could inspire their mind.

For any new business, it's a tough time. He knows that. So do his parents.

But Penn - or Brian Wilson - didn't read that quote on his refrigerator for years for nothing.

"Why make a decision out of fear?'' Penn asks. "Why not move forward with what you believe in?''

Mark Twain would agree.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com.