Holy Fool

"The Holy Fool or yurodivy (юродивый) is the Russian version of foolishness for Christ, a peculiar form of Eastern Orthodox asceticism. The yurodivy is a Holy Fool, one who acts intentionally foolish in the eyes of men."(More about Foolishness for Christ.)

Thunder-Sky, Inc. is sponsoring an art-show in tribute to Chris Farley on the 20th anniversary of his passing, opening October 14, 2017, reception 6 to 10 pm.  

So why him right?  

We've done tribute gigs to Prince and David Bowie and Joseph Cornell and Flannery O'Connor, and even William Blake, but Chris Farley? What is the point here?  He was a lost cause from the get-go, wasn't he? Just a big old mess all the way around, contributing his sloppy stylistics to an era of SNL many people would like to forget -- that early-to-mid-nineties wasteland of frat-boy-antics over-spill caused mainly by Adam Sandler and David Spade and Rob Schneider and Norm McDonald and Chris himself.  Some of those skits were so dead on arrival it made people stop watching the show for years.  Remember this? 

New York Magazine 1995 SNL "Comedy Is Not Funny" piece.

This article is a hatchet job, but still it got at the main idea:  in 1995 SNL was a laughing-stock, and nobody was laughing.  

Yet Chris Farley seemed somehow innocently and intoxicatingly outside of the fray and frazzle of it all.  He was the idiot savant, emphasis on the idiot,  an outsider figure in that overheated Adam-Sandler/David-Spade realm of smarmy meanness and formulaic antics.  He was making his own version of art by begging SNL writers to write skits for him in which he could humiliate himself to the point people could just not look away.  You felt sorry for him, you fell in love with him, you hated him and scorned him, it just did not matter.  He was in charge of his own foolishness, his own destiny somehow.  All through those sketches -- Chris doing that shirtless Chippendale's shuffle, Chris in drag eating fries and telling the other two Gap bitches to lay off, Chris sweetly asking truly numbskull questions of Jeff Daniels and Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese on his own sad little talk-show, Chris on Update sweaty and super-serious letting us know he doesn't use deodorant with finger-quotes, and so on -- Chris was the center of attention, and he seemed to absorb the stares and laughs and humiliation and scorn like a morbidly obese, slapstick vampire, gaining super-strength from what did not kill him. Gaining monster-status and immorality too.

Of course his life was tragic, and stories of his self-abuse are notorious, the over-eating, the drugging, the alcohol bingeing, the whores, the self-hatred blossoming into a kaleidoscope of shame and hurt and eventual unintentional/intentional suicide.  But beneath all that John-Belushi-wannabe decadence and all the psychic wounds was Stupid Angel Chris.  That face.  That lovely sweaty huge face, eyes crossed.  So lovable you could only grab glimpses of it like the sun.

Consider Matt Foley, the door-to-door salesman who lived in a van down by the river, probably Chris's most famous iteration, created by Bob Odenkirk for him.  Suit does not fit.  Those black-rimmed glasses, the slicked back hair, that office-horse voice, that desperation to be a part of a family, any family, the simultaneous desperation to make the other cast members laugh.  In that initial skit, it was almost beyond belief some of that Matt-Foley prancing, the way Chris gave the scum of the earth so much energy and so much (for lack of a better word) dignity.  Holiness, if you will.  Yurodivy to the max. A foolishness for Christ (Chris, if you didn't know, was a great big Catholic and often returned to his faith for refuge from himself and his demons), a foolishness as well for mankind. Sounds lofty and dumb, but you know what?  "Lofty" and "dumb" easily merge in Farley-Land.  

Matt Foley, Holy Fool. 

I quoted the Wikipedia definition of that literary and religious trope above because it seemed somehow to get at Chris completely.  Above all else, Chris's art and performances were orgiastically "intentional."  He intended to find that moment of pure, ripe humiliation, an epiphany of shame, perspiration, despair, hopelessness, grotesqueness, all of that comprising a sort of horn-dog reverse-asceticism, a discipline of humor and also tragedy, the exact locus where they intersect and enhance/diminish each other.  He looked us right in the face within the form of all that is "not right": foolishness, fattiness, creepiness, et al.  And from that spiritual/aesthetic location he was able to create monumental amounts of bliss and absurdity and yup connection.  If you were worth anything, you laughed with him, not at him, but if you did laugh at him, well hell, the joke was completely on you.

That's why Chris Farley.  

So please if you'd like to contribute art to his and our cause, please do.  Send me an email if you're interested:  thunderskyinc@gmail.com.  Work is due by October 7, 2017 at Thunder-Sky, Inc. (4573 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH).  We'll be open 1 to 4 pm that day to accept.

Thunder-Sky, Inc. shares that same Farley ethos, I guess, if you get right down to it, that sense of Holy Foolishness.  Most of our shows bask in that glow:  we aren't after starchy echoes of culture or trends, not after what art is supposed to "mean."  We're after some kind of renegade and hilarious strangeness.  That strangeness is Raymond Thunder-Sky's legacy in fact.  

Consider Ray and Chris in that same epiphany of absurdity and oddness, humiliation realigned into triumph. 

Amen.

  

      

Yours Truly

Tomorrow we're going to be pouring the concrete platform for the permanent sculpture commemorating Raymond Thunder-Sky's cultural status here in the area.  I've written so many times about Raymond sometimes I think I'm really not writing about him anymore, just telepathically conveying what he means to me over and over until the meaning becomes my status of things, the way I hope people see the way I think.  Raymond, to me, was a godsend because he helped me in many ways imagine and re-imagine what I wanted to make happen in the world, as well as how to survive what happened once things get put into place.  

That may sound odd, but Raymond was a specter of survival more than anything else; he used the world to his purposes and found ways to keep going even though the world often seemed not to care.  His ghostliness, his weirdness, made him more powerful and yet also easy to dismiss, and his art, elemental and hilarious renderings of destruction and madness and creativity done in Magic Markers, has that same quality:  some people look at what he did as endless unnecessary doodles, others as social commentary, and then others (like me) simply a vibrant, anarchic diary of existence translated through a need to be seen while disappearing.    

Here's the official data about the sculpture:

“The Raymond Thunder-Sky Spirit Tower”

The Center for Great Neighborhoods

“The Raymond Thunder-Sky Spirit Tower” is an outdoor sculpture created by renowned international sculptor Tom Tsuchiya, commemorating the life and legacy of Raymond Thunder-Sky, a Native American artist (also labeled with a developmental disability) who traveled around the region dressed as a construction worker and clown, drawing construction and demolition sites in Cincinnati, Dayton, and Northern Kentucky.  He left behind over 2300 drawings after his death in 2004, and these drawings, along with many of his tool-boxes, costumes and other items, are archived at Thunder-Sky, Inc., a gallery opened in his name in 2009 in Cincinnati.  Mr. Tsuchiya has completed many private and public sculpture commissions, including statues of Cincinnati Reds players at Great American Ball Park, completed in 2004.  In 2009, he was commissioned to create the "Madden Most Valuable Protectors Award,” the trophy that is annually given to the National Football League's best offensive line.  Other works have been exhibited at Cincinnati's Fountain Square, New York City's Grand Central Terminal, and Washington D.C.'s National Mall.  On September 15, 2016, 4 to 7 pm, “The Raymond Thunder-Sky Spirit Tower” will be unveiled at the old Hellmann Lumber Mill at the corner of Fisk and MLK (formerly 12th street) in Covington, the new office complex for the Center for Great Neighborhoods.  During the unveiling ceremony featuring Tom Tsuchiya with give a short talk about the creation of the sculpture, as well as what Mr. Thunder-Sky meant to his creative process.  As well, inside the Center of Great Neighborhood’s new offices, works by local artists commemorating Mr. Thunder-Sky’s legacy will be presented, as well as a video documenting an educational program that took place at the Carnegie this summer in which Mr. Thunder-Sky’s drawings were used as inspiration for short plays.  “Demolition Man: Selected works from the Raymond Thunder-Sky Archives,” the first retrospective of Mr. Thunder-Sky’s works since his passing in 2004, opens April 28, 2017 at the Carnegie.  All of Mr. Thunder-Sky’s drawings can be viewed at www.raymondthundersky.org.    

Bill met Raymond back in 1999.  He introduced me to Raymond's drawings before I got to meet the man himself, and I was kind of blown away by the simplicity of his art's philosophy and execution. Bill and I were members of an artists collective in Cincinnati and so we were able to curate/sponsor Raymond's first show of drawings.  From that a lot of things unfurled, including a relationship with the great Antonio Adams, lots and lots of shows, eventually founding a non-profit called Visionaries + Voices and opening a studio in Essex Studios in Walnut Hill which was modeled on the artists collective we were in.  And then V+V transforming into an organization/studio solely about artists with disabilities, and then Raymond passing away in 2004, and Bill and I helping V+V to grow into 2 facilities/programs with a staff and clientele.  And then figuring out we needed to keep Raymond somehow in the mix, in 2009, we left V+V and started Thunder-Sky, Inc. in order to reclaim that sense of art without labels, harkening back to that moment when Bill first showed me those Raymond drawings in 1999, using that nostalgia and stubbornness to keep ideas and aesthetics in the mix without the  diagnostic/programmatic/charity overlay.  

For seven years we've kept it going at Thunder-Sky, Inc.:  exhibits and stunts and events that feature artists of all socioeconomic, cultural, educational, etc. backgrounds showing what they can do under the regal banner of a Native American construction-worker dressed up like a clown with a tool-box of markers, getting a kick out of how people build things only to tear it all down and rebuild.  Rinse and repeat.

And now a great sculptor named Tom Tsuchiya has generously created a wonderful monument to Raymond.  When we pour the concrete tomorrow (ironically on the anniversary of 9/11, which is completely unintended and yet kind of brilliant without being brilliant), I'll be thinking of Raymond Thunder-Sky not as a memory but as a force of nature, a weird silent asteroid who came through this area and paved the way forward for a lot of human beings, including yours truly.

To Raymond.

Below are photos with captions of some of the history of Raymond's life, and the history of the sculpture.  

1999:  Raymond with Paul Rowland and Antonio Adams outside the Base Gallery in Over the Rhine, where this whole shebang started.

Raymond drawing, with a mention of Covington, Kentucky.

Antonio with a print of a drawing of Raymond by David Mack, circa 2012.

Drawing of the concrete platform and the Raymond Thunder-Sky Spirit Tower by Sculptor Tom Tsuchiya.

Tom with a replica of the Spirit Tower.

Plague for the Raymond Thunder-Sky Spirit Tower.  David Wecker was one of the first journalists to write about Raymond.

Tom Tsuchiya's plan-out for the sculpture.

Raymond in Chicago, by the then-named Sears Tower...

Raymondism

Raymond Thunder-Sky

David Bowie

Lindsey M Whittle

We're opening two shows this month at Thunder-Sky, Inc.:  "Radically Visible," featuring costumes, photos, collages, drawings, and other art by Antonio Adams, Sky Cubacub, Craig Matis, and Lindsey M Whittle, as well as a group show curated by Emily Brandehoff, "Bowie in the Basement," featuring about 40  or so works from a variety of artists, celebrating Bowie's life and art.  When I was pulling together news release info, I came across the above three photos, and they've stuck in my head, so that means of course a blogpost about Raymond, Bowie, and radical visibility, but also beyond that I wanted to reconstitute a little of Raymond's myth and menace and glory, conjure up his presence from back in the day, when people did not know what the hell to do with him.  And despite a lot of bull-shit he persevered, finding a way to be what he wanted to be, who he wanted to be.

Raymond had no choice really in that department.  For him, costume, performance, art, life, and being Raymond all intermingled into one sensibility that seemed forever eschewing conformity but also never flaunting the eschewment self-consciously.  I am what I am so just get fucking used to it -- that's all over his face in pictures, especially in the one up top.  He toured Cincinnati like that, all clowned- and construction-workered-up, silently going about his obsessive business of drawing from real life the destruction and construction people did to their surroundings, haters be damned.  And there were haters,  people who treated him like a freak without kindness or even just plain everyday manners.  I'm not going to go into those stories because they don't matter here.  He survived, created his own universe, found a way to make meaning out of what he wanted the world to be.  

He left behind those costumes too, which we've archived at his joint:  hard-hats, clown-suits, boots, overalls, clown-collars, hats. Shininess juxtaposed with burlap ruggedness, a show-off propensity pushed up against the need to be part of a team.  At the end of the day he merged show-business and working-class desires, furtively and yet also somehow loudly proclaiming his right to be a great big beautiful freak, while also trying to invent a job for himself.  (His construction-worker drag came from the fact that he truly wanted to be a construction-worker.  He actually started putting on the work-clothes and showing up at sites with his drawing materials because he couldn't get hired on as an actual construction-worker [he didn't have a driver's license so they couldn't].  He willed himself into that status through a sort of flaky and beautiful camouflage.)

The freakishness and the self-created celebration of the freakishness go hand in hand with Raymond. He was his own one-man band in many, hermetically sealed ways, but also willfully open-ended, walking and walking and walking in that get-up all over the city, riding buses, being a part of the world bubbled-off but completely in the maelstrom, a sort of Native-American-Shriner's-Clown-Working-Class Dandy.  

Nineteenth Century poet and philosopher Charles Baudelaire was always riffing on and refining his metaphysical takes on the "dandy."  He defined dandyism as an elevation of aesthetics to living religion, that a dandy in his finest fineries simply walking about the wretched city, shining like some self-created aristocrat, pisses off the responsible citizenry existentially because the dandy has paid so much close attention to his own existence and identity outside of the realm of their control, and their taste, their lives. 

Casting Raymond as a "dandy" kind of helps situate and contextualize what the artists in "Radically Visible" will be up to, as well as gives some backroom logic to "Bowie in the Basement."  In their work, Sky Cubacub is on a quest to reestablish the meaning of fashion and clothes as both demarcation and demonstration of the way someone should be able to live and love. Antonio Adams, one of Raymond's best friends, carries on Raymond's legacy through his own sense of kingly garments and a continuous reinvention through art of his own mythologized self.  Lindsey M Whittle takes silliness and freakishness in as forms of alchemical oxygen, breathing out little kingdoms of goof and color, and Craig Matis' collages use the circus, itself a version of over-the-top captivity and release, as metaphor for reconfiguring the struggle to be exactly who you need to be, no matter what constraints and condemnations.  

Then there's David Bowie, king of the dandies, shape-shifting his way from space-cadet to thin white duke to harlequin and beyond. Bowie has left behind a legacy of I-am-what-I-am-so-fucking-get-used-to-it; he managed to change the world by appearing not to be in it.  Somehow he was able to crack the code of all clowns and freaks:  be exactly who you are until the day you die.  

Why?

 

 

So why do we keep on doing Thunder-Sky, Inc.?  We're 6 years in now, and sometimes it feels like a never-ending cycle of chores -- news releases and Facebook posts and nails into walls and spackle and paint and bathroom cleaner and paper-towels and buying beer and wine and pop and ice, all in the name of curating the best and weirdest and sweetest art shows we can pull together, 6 times a year.  What is it now?  33 shows so far, with maybe about the same number installed in other galleries and places across the region.  God knows we don't do it for the cash.  Thunder-Sky, Inc. is all non-profit, all volunteer, all kind of makeshift and holy and silly and serious and sarcastic simultaneously.  It's about Raymond Thunder-Sky sure, but I think what's evolved from the initial desire to keep Raymond in the mix is this:

 

 

Antonio Adams.  He met Raymond the same time Bill and I did, and he was with us through the whole V+V evolution, and when we had to find an escape and a life-raft from the whole complicated V+V thing he came with us.  The life-raft was that space next to N-Vision, next to the Comet, 4573 Hamilton Avenue, Northside.  And in those six years Antonio has found a voice deeper and more hilarious and smarter and assured than ever before.  He uses the space during the week as a studio.  He calls "Artist's Meetings" to order on Saturdays, whether other artists are there or not.  He creates his own sense of super-stylish chic through costume and custom, always looking forward to next year.  And look at those gloves.  Damn.

 

Last night we opened our 34th in-house gig called "History Channel:  New Art from Old Art," and as usual the opening was joyous, off-kilter, clumsy, sweet, perfect.  I screwed up the wall-text with using the wrong abbreviation for "Price on Request," and Bill had a cow.  But despite that (or perhaps because of it) it was still hilariously what always happens:  lots of people from all kinds of different backgrounds, creeds, classes, etc., hanging out, walking around, making conversation, laughing.  There was a rainbow outside above the joint for a little while too, kind of like the 5:4 decision given its own God-blessed neon light.  Antonio invited his mom and sister and they all showed, and he got costumed and held court awaiting their presence.  Some artists from a studio in Hamilton called InsideOut, a place, like V+V, for artists with developmental disabilities, were there, totally enjoying their little bit of spotlight, and their excitement kind of got to me in the same way seeing Antonio holding court gets me.  They were all excited to see their art-history-inspired art on our humble white walls.  I truly loved the work.  Loved Cassie Sullivan's quilted Warhol "Marilyns" and Alicia Jones' "Frida Kahlo" painting, an astute rendering of the artist as both goddess and cartoon and David Campbell's beautiful and fragile and kind of satiric take on Grant Woods' "American Gothic" sour-pusses...    Hanging with the InsideOut-ers was a flashback to the days when Bill and I were pulling together gigs for the artists with disabilities we'd stumble upon doing out regular work, that sense of discovery and bliss, like art can truly matter when you let everything else go. 

 

The other artists we've gotten to know through Thunder-Sky, Inc., some labeled, some not, were there last night too, hanging out.  Marc Lambert, super-genius painter of sci-fi visions on ceiling tiles, contributed an archive of Styrofoam pharaohs and a couple ceiling-tile Sistine-Chapel fist-bumps to "History Channel," and he came to the opening with his whole extended family all dolled up and pleasant and affable.  Robert McFate did a great Cincy riff on Hopper's "Nighthawks," and Emily Brandehoff came up with some great historical zingers, the best of which combines Goya and the snack-meat product Slim Jim's.  It's to die for.  Scott Carney merged Japanese nautical art with Peter Max.  Alex Bartenberger Rothko'ed it up.  Avril Thurman took on Jenny Holzer in the best teletype kind of way.  Dale Jackson turned Yoko Ono's instructions from Grapefruit into gorgeous recipe cards.  And Antonio took on Da Vinci,  Michelangelo, Thomas Hart Benton, all in a deluxe super-Antonio manner.

 

It's all like that:  arbitrary, heart-felt, odd, but exactly what it should be. 

 

We're not creating anything institutional or pretentious or even practical at Thunder-Sky, Inc.  We are not building it to last, because nothing really does.  Just take a look at Raymond's drawings and you'll get that doom validated and made fun of.  What we do at Thunder-Sky, Inc. is very momentary and slap-happy because it has to be:  we only want what is authentically here, weird enough to tickle us, solidly made, simply presented, but also nutty enough to not be like anything else.  

 

And then everybody gets together and eats potato chips.  And drinks some beer and wine and pop.

 

Last night was such a great example of why we do it.  So thanks to everybody who does it with us. 

 

And then when we got home on CNN President Obama was singing "Amazing Grace." 

 

A Little Drag

Emily Brandehoff's take on Goya.

Marc Lambert's take on van Gogh.

Antonio Adams' take on da Vinci.

Why not go for the gusto?

"Carnival is a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators. In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act… The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary, that is non-carnival, life are suspended during carnival: what is suspended first is hierarchical structure and all the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it… or any other form of inequality among people."  From Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics.

Since starting this whole thing with Visionaries + Voices (V+V) back in the day, I always wanted to focus on the way art made by artists who are disconnected from the "restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary [...] life" is packaged and seen and thought about, and one of the best ways, at least from my POV, is to locate it right smack-dab in the middle of the restrictions.  One manner of defining "outsider artists" is to assume they have no connection to art history, that narrative and thoroughfare and etiquette through which credentialed "insider artists" often enter into careers, or at least shows.  In fact that definition is often celebrated by both ends of the spectrum:  by outsider art enthusiasts gloating over an artist's disenfranchisement and therefore his/her "power" in that realm, and by insider art critics who dabble a little bit in outsider-art criticism when there's a big museum show featuring some of it, wherein outsiders artists are cast as heroic self-taught "geniuses," beyond the "need" for education or edification or inspiration outside of their own little screwy worlds. 

In 2007, one of the first big gigs we did as V+V was "Pop Life:  Outsider Artists and the Pop Idea" at the University of Cincinnati Galleries.  Basically we took Andy Warhol's oeuvre and used it as a resource and confidence-builder for artists at the studio to kind of relocate themselves beyond "Outsiderland." This intervention was pretty conventional and yet kind of messed-up too, allowing participating artists a place where they were able to find a little piece of the world free of the "terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with hierarchical structures."  It was a joyous thing to me to witness:  all that art being birthed from the heard of Zeus/Warhol, positing Andy as an outsider in multiple incarnations (gay and working class, just to start).  A review in one of the local papers stated:  "Outsider art is controversial. Some theorists claim that 'pure' outsider art can only be made when the artist hasn't been exposed to art history or contemporary culture. But that belief assumes that somewhere there exists some Eden-like state, chaste and unmolested, and forgets that even things like art history and contemporary culture are arbitrary. Some might call Aboriginal art outsider art without considering the fact that Aboriginal artists have history and culture; it just doesn't look like ours."  The writer tries really hard and with a lot of genuine sweetness there, but she still doesn't get it.  Kudos for trying anyway.  It's not about "their" history and culture "looking like ours."  It's our culture and history.  Period. 

Oh well.

In 2009, we did it again at the Cincinnati Art Museum, with a show called "Matisse & Picasso:  a Visionary Exploration."  This one had the same strategy as "Pop Life," but we emphasized the inspirations taken on by Matisse and Picasso back when they were formulating their versions of Modernism -- as in lifting ever so lovingly from African sculptors and residents of insane asylums, etc.  In flipping that script a little, we tried to figure out how artists we were supporting had a powerful place to work from, outside of being "educated" about art history.  They have a claim to make.  We did a little slightly saccharine but well intended video for this gig.  You can check it out here:  "Matisse & Picasso: A Visionary Exploration."

In our guise as Thunder-Sky, Inc. we do a lot of this kind of stuff without even trying, trying to pull together artists from all kinds of backgrounds, contexts, and hierarchies into one small but truly articulated zone -- what Bakhtin posits as the "carnival [...] a pageant without footlights and without a division into performers and spectators. In carnival everyone is an active participant, everyone communes in the carnival act…"  This act is making art, showing it, and celebrating it without a lot of b-s (outside of the b-s I'm generating right now of course, which is the kind of b-s I'm drawn to so there you go).  But also finding meaning inside that smallness, and each show we do does what it does, hopefully accumulating some sense and significance through the process.  Since starting Thunder-Sky, Inc. in 2009, we've taken on William Blake, Flannery O'Connor, Abstract Expressionism, and a few other modes of American Art and Not-Art History; we don't do this just to be smarty-pants, because we're not that inclined to impress people, just to find a way to relocate and redefine and redeploy some of the ways we treat artists (and people) based on who they happen to be. 

So here comes another iteration:  "History Channel:  New Art from Old Art."  This one opens Friday June 26, 2015, reception 6 to 10 pm, at Thunder-Sky, Inc in Northide next to NVision next to the Comet.  Take a look up top to see some great carnivalizations of high-end art, tongue-in-cheek, but also lovingly made, with a strict eye toward creating something beautiful and funny to look at.  The artists we asked to be a part are maybe "outsider artists," maybe not.  Who cares?  That distinction kind of melts away once you get over a lot of things, including the need to care too much how you're seen and how you see.    

At the end of the day, as Rupaul says, "We're born naked, and the rest is drag."  The quote up top by Mr. Bahktin is probably the urtext that defines Ru's whole career, and what we're trying to do most of the time too. 

Raymond loved carnivals.  He also loved a little drag.    

At Home

 

 

We walked downtown for a while last night, hitting some of our favorite places.  Cincinnati is a great joint on Fridays like yesterday, blue sky with effervescent clouds, too many great restaurants to choose from, and the promise of a big festival being setup near Fountain on the Square (Taste of Cincinnati starts today), day-laborers and cops and managers getting ready to set up tent poles and shut down streets and transform the whole cityscape into festival-scape. 

 

And then, down near the river, this carousel (pictured above in all its glory).  It's just glorious.  No other word for it.  It could feel cheesy if you wanted it to, but somehow tucked into its tidy little concrete and glass parlor, surrounded by fountains and sunshine, cattycorner to the baseball stadium, with a sweeping view of the Roebling bridge in its big picture windows, the thing has a personality and tiny grandeur that feels storybook without too much effort or kitsch.  Thanks to the painstakingly executed frontispiece paintings by Jonathan Queen, and the whole get-in-the-spirit camp of the actual carousel ponies and insects and birds, the thing is artful in ways a lot of contemporary art can't be because contemporary art often wants to comment on itself so much it loses the spontaneous silliness/insouciance needed to make it transcend itself.  Looking at the carousel yesterday I just felt at home, and also a little giddy, because here's this thing that nobody really needs given such tender loving care that I almost wanted to ride on it, to put up with the humiliation a bald fifty-year-old overweight guy riding a carousel might have to endure. 

 

I didn't get on.  But I stood there and soaked in the whole Cincinnati-loving iconography and glossy commemoration of it:  each Queen-produced panel depicts a zoo animal enjoying different Cincinnati landmarks, each carousel-creature  (sponsored by some rich family or foundation or organization) is a homage to a Cincinnati icon of some kind or another.  All of that is kind of like the too-sweet maraschino cherry you take off your sundae before eating it of course.  Basically it's an amusement park ride given a serious, joyous revamp, shiny and vivid and maybe close to perfect in its nostalgia and open-endedness.  Anybody can ride.

 

So I thought about Raymond Thunder-Sky, as I usually do, and how much he would have loved this thing.  Lord would he have ridden this carousel for sure, drawn it as it got constructed, basking in its glorious nighttime glow on his way back from drawing demolition sites.  I bet you anything it would have been a sort of command-center for him, a fortress and hub he would return to again and again.  He loved carnivals, circuses, anything like that.  Back in 2001, when we went to Hollywood CA with him for a conference where we sat up a booth to exhibit his drawings, he didn't really participate; he spent almost all of his time at Disneyland.  So that's informing my love of the carousel too, that sense of Raymond-ness, that hope of magic (even in its most sentimental, candy-colored form) restoring a kind of sanity to the world.  This carousel would have been a spiritual place for Raymond I think.  The way it revolves slowly on its own accord, ending each set of revolutions in intervals to let people on and off. 

 

The way it's just there, shiny and unreal, birthed for no other reason than it would be neat to have in the world.  

"The Master of Loyalty Is in the Gallery Tonight"

Antonio Adams, "Unrealized and Unforeseen Day," acrylic on canvas, 2012.

Antonio Adams, Cedric Michael Cox, and Artworks apprentices, "Raymond Thunder-Sky Mural," on the outside of Visionaries + Voices, finished 2009. 

Antonio Adams, "There's a Circus on the Corner of the Streets," marker on large copy of an unfinished Raymond Thunder-Sky drawing, 2010.  In the collection of the Museum of Everything, London, England. 

Antonio Adams, "The Master of Loyalty Is in the Gallery Tonight," marker on paper, 2012 

Antonio Adams teaching a class at Miami University, 2012. 

Raymond Thunder-Sky Polaroid, with clowns, date unknown. 

Raymond Thunder-Sky, "Wrecker Tear Down Old Middletown Nursing Home," marker on cardstock, date unknown.

I wrote the essay below a couple years back for a show at Thunder-Sky, Inc., but I forgot to use it. Found the doc in an old email file.  It's all about Antonio and Raymond, and everything.  These photos were in the same file.  I think I was going to do a little booklet or something, but it seems like a really good blogpost too...  

Antonio Adams wears an elaborate costume to every art opening he attends. Made from felt, glitter, and fabric paint. Antonio calls it his “Art Thing Kingdom Master” attire. A triangular facemask shields the bottom of his face, and on his head he wears a crown. Antonio features himself in this costume in many of his drawings and paintings as well – most significantly in one of his latest works, “Unrealized and Unforeseen Day,” a large 5’ X 4’ acrylic-on-canvas. In this vibrant, rigorous painting, Antonio as the Art Thing Kingdom Master presides over a crowd of “regular people” being summarily transformed into heavenly celebrities, while the “bad celebrities” scale the brick walls surrounding a majestic stage with tears burning in their eyes, unable to get into the Kingdom.

If “Unrealized and Unforeseen Day” is a revelatory moment for Antonio, it’s because since 1999, when he was a lonely depressed high school student with a learning disability, he has been diligently building a visual and moral philosophy that has sustained him through a lot of stress and strife, including the untimely death of his mentor and friend, Raymond Thunder-Sky.

Raymond was a fixture of downtown Cincinnati street-culture for over 20 years before Bill Ross (my partner and co-founder of Thunder-Sky, Inc., the art gallery we run in Raymond’s name) found out he was secretively making incredible drawings in 1999. A social-worker assigned to help Raymond toward the end of his life, Bill at first was taken aback by Raymond. A Native American whose father Richard Bright-fire Thunder-Sky had been a Mohawk chief and a Hollywood actor in the 1940s, Raymond was known as the Construction Clown by those who would see him walking down city streets in a construction-worker/clown costume, a huge toolbox in tow. He spent much of his time traveling to, and drawing, buildings being demolished at sites all over town. At a meeting one day held to discuss Raymond’s deteriorating health, Raymond pulled out a stack of drawings from one of his toolboxes. Bill was flabbergasted.

Raymond’s drawings are done mostly in pencil and magic-marker, and depict buildings being torn down and replaced by imaginary facilities with titles like Clown Suit Factories and Card Trick Amusement Parks. Each drawing is organized straightforwardly, with imagery of construction and demolition festooned with a few lines of narration in a careful script. In one archetypal drawing, a movie theatre is gutted, with a wrecking ball suspended above the wreckage, a nearby caption reading: “Last showing at Old Valentine Theatre in Downtown Toledo Will Being Torn Down to Clearing Way for New Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus Store.” (The whole archive of Raymond’s 2200+ drawings can be seen at www.raymondthundersky.org.)

A few months after meeting Raymond, Bill and I met Antonio. At the time, Antonio was 19 and barely speaking. Bullied at his high school, he took comfort in creating art as a way to endure isolation. At the time, he was making cat sculptures from pieces of wood he’d find. His bedroom was overflowing with them. We introduced Raymond and Antonio in 2000 at Base Gallery in downtown Cincinnati, where we were pulling together an exhibit. Antonio writes about that day, in a caption to a drawing he made commemorating the occasion: “That first time am met Raymond Thunder-Sky at Base Art Gallery he was a Native American outsider self-taught artist of clown-construction-worker. He usually very shy but he also hysterically of sitcom person.”

As their relationship grew Raymond became the prime inspiration that would guide Antonio’s life, imagination, and art. In 2001 Antonio and Raymond were featured in the show we curated at Base, titled “Art Thing.” (The title came from an object Antonio had made, a tiny kelly-green felt pillow on which Antonio had written “Art Thing” in white fabric paint.) One of the first exhibits featuring local outsider artists, the show was packed and many works sold. After this success, Antonio and Raymond also showed their works at the Pittsburgh Folk Art Festival in 2002, the Outsider Art Fair in New York City (2003), and several other regional and national auctions and art fairs.

In 2003, when Bill and I helped to open a studio for artists with disabilities called Visionaries and Voices (www.visionariesandvoices.com), Antonio and Raymond were the first artists through the door. I can still picture that day, a very clear and tender image: Raymond in a hardhat and clown costume, and Antonio in a t-shirt and jeans, sitting next to each other at a folding table, working on their own drawings, using pencils and markers from a shared coffee-can. A few years later, Antonio, along with artist Cedric Michael Cox and teenaged students involved in a summer art-making program called Artworks, painted a mural on the side of the building that currently houses Visionaries and Voices (now a full-fledged service organization supporting over 140 artists with disabilities in a week-day program). The mural stretches across a large expanse of the building, and features a gigantic Raymond in full Construction Clown regalia, a crane hurling a wrecking ball into a building behind him.

On October 29, 2004 Raymond passed away from complications of liver cancer. The day of Raymond’s funeral, Antonio had a large, scrolled piece of paper with him at the gravesite. The service was reminiscent of Raymond’s beautiful strangeness: a Shriner’s clown read the “Clown’s Prayer” aloud (we came to find out that whenever a Shriner’s clown passes away, they have the Clown’s Prayer read at their funeral), and then an honorary member of the Sheyenne tribe oversaw a sage burning ritual. He spoke about Raymond’s spirit being scattered to the four winds.

After the service, Antonio came over to Bill and me, and unraveled the scroll to show us he had drawn a hysterically funny yet vividly poignant back-story for Raymond. The resulting work of art resembles a heady, Byzantine graphic novel with funky, evangelical flourishes – Antonio well on his way to merging his imagination with Raymond’s. Throughout the piece, Antonio narrates and illustrates key semi-fictionalized moments in Raymond’s life. Each moment is titled with a year, as in, “1950: Raymond born when he was a baby.” The image that goes along with the text is of an infant Raymond, swaddled in his mother’s arms. “In 1964,” according to Antonio’s timeline, “Raymond’s dad Richard Bright-Fire Thunder-Sky and Raymond are dancing to the music of the 60s.” An adolescent Raymond (with a sort of Antonio-styled afro/pompadour) dances with his tall and regal father. In 1973, Raymond is “having a shy moment with the hippies.” Antonio’s depiction of Raymond’s death: “Raymond in Heaven with God. Raymond die for cancer, Friday October 29 2004. What a sad day.” The image is Raymond with his toolbox standing beside a large Christ figure, like brothers reuniting at a celestial barbecue.

Antonio eventually appropriated the “four winds” metaphor from Raymond’s graveside service to create a suite of nine 2’ X 2’ wood-panel portrait paintings, with Raymond’s portrait at the center of them. Embellished in loud circus-neon stripes, each painting pays tribute to the people in Raymond’s life who were instrumental in showing and celebrating the art he made while he was still alive. Directly above Raymond’s portrait is a self-portrait, Antonio in full “Art Thing Kingdom Master” regalia, a direct descendent or possibly even prodigal son. The costume first came into being right after Raymond’s death in 2004, and over years evolved into the blend of superhero kitsch and Samurai finery it is today. The evolution, like all of Antonio’s art, is hyper-intentional. Antonio uses the costume as a reminder of Raymond’s status both as artist and as spectacle.

The “Four Winds” suite of paintings was created for the opening of the art gallery we established in Raymond’s name, Thunder-Sky, Inc. in 2009. Antonio is currently the permanent Artist-in-Residence at Thunder-Sky, Inc., and curates exhibits, as well as oversees an art-making workshop every Saturday in the basement of the gallery.

Of the 2200+ drawings Raymond left behind, about 500 of them were never completed. In 2011, as part of an exhibit at Thunder-Sky, Inc., Antonio picked four of his favorites. We had prints made of them on large pieces of paper. In six months, Antonio merged the unfinished remains of Raymond’s art with his own rich, allegorical consciousness. In each piece, Raymond is depicted as a mischievous god overseeing the destruction of the old world and welcoming in the new. Or in Antonio’s words, “The one and only construction clown who taking over the demolition.” Straddling a crane and smiling gleefully with angel wings sprouting from his clown-suit, Raymond is now, in Antonio’s universe, a sort of go-to spirit, a prophet he can consult with. All four of these drawings are now in the permanent collection of James Brett’s Museum of Everything in London, England.

August 29, 2012, Antonio’s one-man show at Thunder-Sky, Inc., “Unrealized and Unforeseen,” opened. Antonio choreographed the whole reception, giving us a list of foods, people he wanted to invite, as well as a very structured layout of where each painting, drawing, photograph and sculpture should be installed in the space. The result felt as if we had been given access into Antonio’s brain, a territory of vivid colorful landscapes, stringent common-sense rules, and a penchant for tragedy and comedy blending into absurdity and bliss. He had been working on the concept for over a year, creating an epic portfolio of artworks in which famous “bad” celebrities (including Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen) get “unrealized” (meaning returned to non-celebrity status), while unfamous folks (people Adams has selected from his everyday life) become major celebrities in his own personal cosmos. In the same way Raymond appropriated construction/demolition tropes for his aesthetic purposes, Antonio uses tabloid stories and reality-TV as a framework to tell his own story in each of the “Unrealized and Unforeseen” works, culminating in his to-date masterpiece, “Unrealized and Unforeseen Day.” In transforming universal gossip into personal gossamer, Antonio has reinforced a vision and morality that has been in all of his work since Bill and I first met him. It is a message of epic transformation, imagination trumping rational thought in the pursuit of truths no one is ready for. In “Unrealized and Unforeseen Day,” the message is clear: no matter whom you think you are, you’re still like everyone else, and that subjugation is your freedom, your chance at grace. On the right side of the painting, where the canvas curves over the stretcher bar, Antonio has painted a blue, translucent rendition of Raymond smiling in the periphery – always there, quiet and calm, like an angel sanely orbiting and overseeing his world.

Born in Cincinnati in 1981, Antonio Adams has been drawing, painting and creating since he was a little boy. Now his work is exhibited and collected nationally.  He is one of the co-founders of Visionaries & Voices, an arts organization for artists with disabilities in Cincinnati, as well as Thunder-Sky, Inc., an art gallery also in Cincinnati.  His sculptures, paintings and drawings have been featured at White Columns Gallery in New York City, The Outsider Art Fair (New York City), The Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati), The Cincinnati Art Museum, Base Gallery, Visionaries + Voices, the Pittsburgh Folk Art Exhibit and Symposium, Middletown (Ohio) Fine Arts Center, Fitton Center for Creative Arts (Hamilton, Ohio), University of Cincinnati Gallery, Kennedy Heights Arts Center (Cincinnati), Country Club Gallery (Cincinnati and Los Angeles), and In the Gallery (Nashville, Tennessee). His art was featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Everything in London, England.  He has an upcoming exhibit at the Westin Gallery in Cincinnati in November 2015.   

All of the Above

 

 

Five years.  When I think about it, it's kind of dumbfounding and inevitable at the same time.  Bill and I have been doing Thunder-Sky, Inc. for five years.  We've had a lot of help from a lot of great people, but we've kind of been the ones who push and prod this whatever-it-is (gallery/studio/fan-club/clubhouse/limbo) forward, very slowly forward, the way Raymond kind of moved:  intent, focused, but also nonchalant, maybe insouciant, not caring and yet caring, building and demolishing simultaneously because he knew how the world works. 

 

Above is a photo from October 30, 2009.  That was the debut gig at Thunder-Sky, Inc., when we opened a show called "Raymond Nation."  Looks like a stalwart ghost dangling in a walk-in freezer.  I love that chill Raymond imparts.  He never really let you know exactly how he was feeling or what he was thinking; he was cryptic in the best possible way.  I respect that so much looking back, how he just followed through on his own strictly self-determined purpose, how he built a life out of demolition and fury and happiness, how it all became what he wanted it to become till the very day he died. 

 

And that's why I keep beating this dead horse.  Because Raymond's purpose was to make something out of nothing and to do it without a lot of bull-shit or a lot of attention.  He had a purpose beyond all that and yet he wasn't above any of it.  He relished obscurity as much as relishing those tiny moments of appreciation he was allotted at the end of his life (a few shows of his work at Base Gallery, Visionaries + Voices, and other places we were able to find to exhibit his drawings).  But he also understood the joke of his existence so much so that the joke became his kingdom.  He played it all up -- clownishness, construction-worker-ness, his strangeness and alienness given superhero qualities by his own hand.  And in those drawings he left behind you feel him laughing, sneering a little, letting us know he does not give really a shit, except for the big things like prisons crumbling and being replaced by card-tricks and clownishness, a whole industry of trickery and sarcasm.

 

He was punk.  He was innocence.  He was experience.  He was a freak who made that freakishness a route to grandeur and hilarity and self-knowledge.

 

Most of all he was what he was, without apologies.  He was scary in the way clowns can be scary.  He was lovely in the way clowns can be lovely.  He was hard-working, he was mysterious, he was very simple. 

 

And so this is why we keep doing Thunder-Sky, Inc.:  because I truly can't find any other role-model, any other reason, to organize/coordinate artistic endeavors outside of that stream of light.  Maybe it's obsession or stupidity or stubbornness (probably all of the above), but somehow Raymond's life was too elementally metaphoric and wildly outlandish and secretively productive to forget, to be placed in a pile of other file-folders marked "outsider art" or "people with disabilities" or "folk hero" or "mysterious stranger."  He deserves his own little hall of fame, and so here it is, at least for a little while.  At least another year. 

 

This is a year to year thing.  It has to be.  We don't want it to become bigger than it needs to be.  So Thunder-Sky, Inc. has an under the radar quality, a homespun do-it-yourself-ness that tries to run away from being labeled or even being appreciated.  It is a little place that does not want to be anything except exactly what it is in the very moment you see it.  And for most of the year it's doors are closed anyway.  Open only on weekends, and on the Fridays we have opening receptions (6 times a years), or when someone wants to do a poetry reading, or any other special occasion that seems worth it. 

 

Thunder-Sky, Inc. is a non-profit ghost in the machine.  We do what we have to do to make things move, but not a lot of anything else.  Like Raymond and his drawings:  elemental, precise, completed, on to the next thing.

 

We're celebrating the five year anniversary next Friday, October 24, 2014, with a show called "The New Clownville Amusement," with Raymond-inspired works by Robert McFate, Curtis Davis, artists who use the Visionaries + Voices studio, artists from Able Projects, Antonio Adams, the Waldecks and friends, and many wonderful others.  This show came together like all of the other ones we do, things piling up and then somehow organized into a semblance of order through just doing it.  The five year anniversary means Raymond has been gone for ten years.  Ten years.  Good Lord.  He won't disappear.  Even if Thunder-Sky, Inc. disappears Raymond won't.  He is building and destroying things in all kinds of ways right now that we can't even fathom, which is the way it always was anyway.

 

 

  

Groundbreaking

Earlier this week, I was at a conference organized around the idea that people with disabilities can have better lives if they get jobs with real wages.  This seems like a truly simple and true assertion, but also like anything that seems simple and true the idea is fraught with complications because, well, it's people.  You just can't make assertions like that without considering history, perceptions, experiences...  And you can't really assert anything for sure when talking about "people with disabilities" anyway.  That's a category, not actual people, when you get down to it.  Actual "people with disabilities" are individuals with all kinds of different needs, talents, interests, brilliances, predilections, shortcomings, etc.  In short it's hard to make something concrete out of something so abstract.

But maybe you have to.

The conference gathered together all kinds of folks, from people with disabilities (all kinds of disabilities, developmental, physical, and so on) to their families, from social workers to business people.  There was an energy in the air; maybe I'm making that up, but still...  It felt electric somehow, and serious, and everyone was paying attention to what's currently going on.  Supported Employment for people with disabilities is not a new idea of course, but this time we don't have the luxury of maintaining the status quo while pontificating and talking about "change."  We have to make it happen.  Medicaid rules are changing, and Medicaid funds the majority of supports for people with disabilities.  The changes are about prioritizing toward helping people have as much independence and equality as possible.  The rules changes come from all kinds of places within the federal government, not just Medicaid (Department of Justice and Department of Labor are in on it too, which makes sense, because the issue isn't really about social programs as much as civil rights and labor rights:  95% of people who don't make minimum wage on their jobs are actually people who go to sheltered workshops), so it's really hard to ignore. 

This time it's top down in ways it's never been.  And on the ground are large programs/buildings/workshops that have been doing  business for decades in ways that the Feds are now calling unfair and possibly illegal. 

What does this mean?

It means maybe we who have jobs supporting people with disabilities, especially those with developmental disabilities, have been looking at the situation through the wrong set of eyes.  We often see issues for the people we support as programmatic.  How can we alter programs to help people?  But actually we should be looking at not the programs, but the results (the "outcomes" in government-speak) of those programs.  And the results just aren't that great; in fact they have kept a lot of people in situations they could possibly break away from, if only the programs they are in were in question.  In other words, the question should be, "What is happening in this person's life?  Is he/she getting what he/she needs to be successful?"  As opposed to the question we usually ask, "What program does he/she need to be referred to?"

Ronald Reagan (I know a lot of people will probably not like me quoting the Gipper, but what the hell?) once said, "The best social program is a real job."  And even though it's hyper-complicated to make results/outcomes happen, that's basically what we are talking about here:  how do we help people make a living wage?  How do we help people secure success (without the program getting in the way)?  How do we support people to be the best people they can be?

  

For better or for worse, this process of being the best you can be often has its foundation in what people do for a living.  And if you take that possibility out of the picture, you often are grasping at straws.  I've met a majority of my friends through work.  A majority of my identity as a person is informed solely by my job.  I've spent 36 of my 49 years working in restaurants, libraries, group-homes, etc. Yup.  I started at 13, riding my jankety moped to the Irish Point Restaurant in Pendleton, Indiana so I could be a car-hop and grill-cook.  After that I moved on to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Rax Roast Beef, Ponderosa Steakhouse, and so on.  I developed a work ethic through the process.  I think I may have learned more real lessons at all those jobs than anything I ever learned in school and college because it's all about putting yourself in the middle of things, being "in" the moment, and understanding you are a part of the world that is needed, that you have responsibilities and you are counted on.

By blocking entrance into this sense of responsibility, through programs, through good intentions, we who are trying to help people with disabilities are just plain hindering them.  We've been doing this for, well, since we figured out we needed to be helping.  We've constructed large programs and facilities that are about "training" people, but the training has gone on for decades without any results.  We're good at wanting to help.  Not so good at actually doing it.

So now there's a shift.  And I'm hoping it's for real.  I have a feeling it is.  Because at the end of the day the reason I chose this line of work is to not be a part of a program, but a part of a movement.  That sounds lofty as all get out, reminiscent of hippie BS, but it's true.  I don't have a lot of school spirit, never have, what pushes me forward is making stuff happen:  results.  I think that's true of a lot of social-worker-types, and we just get so caught up in the programs we make, funding them, going through certifications and audits for them, that we forget sometimes what they are there for. 

Anyway, that conference earlier this week truly made me feel like we're on our way toward something, as opposed to on our way to protecting what's already been done.  There may be people with disabilities who can't have real jobs, or maybe who don't want to have them, and that's okay.  What is exciting is that from now on, I think, I hope, the assumption is people can work and have lives and pay taxes and have beers with their buddies after work.  They can be"equal" in one of the truest ways to be equal:  as necessary contributors in getting things done.

Which brings me to Raymond Thunder-Sky. 

That's one of his drawings up there.   (Many more can be seen at www.raymondthundersky.org.)   Having a real job was Raymond's obsession, and he had a few (and also worked for a long time in sheltered workshops), did well at everything he tried, but the job that he truly craved, being a part of a construction crew, eluded him because he couldn't get a driver's license (that's one of the major prerequisites to being on a crew).  So he created a job for himself:  he began drawing sites, setting up shop on the periphery of demolition and construction sites with a toolbox filled with markers and paper. He became a ghost-worker in many ways, sublimating his desire for an actual gig with what he could actually do.  I'm thinking, in the climate of today, he may have been able, somewhere along the line, to get a license with some help.  With some persistence from both himself and his supporters he may have been able to at least try to have that career.  Maybe he would be both a participant in the real world, and an artist commenting and documenting his participation in it.

Anyway you look at it, this is an ongoing saga...  I hope, I truly hope, this time there are actual results.