Voices of Cincy: Beautiful Mystery (Keith Banner)

Jul 8, 2010 by thunderskyinc

Welcome to the latest installment of Voices of Cincy, our ongoing series of guest posts by local writers and bloggers. This week’s guest is Keith Banner, and O. Henry Award winner and the founder of both Visionaries & Voices, and Thunder-Sky, Inc.  -Loki

When people ask why Thunder-Sky, Inc. (a gallery/arts organization housed in Northside near the Comet) exists, I normally tell them to keep Raymond Thunder-Sky’s legacy alive, and to focus the spotlight on artists like him.  But I also think that we did it so we could keep his name alive, as well collect the stories people remember about him.  Every time I write a facebook or blog post about Thunder-Sky, Inc, or draft a letter about something, or answer the phone or whatever it’s like I am keeping his memory around through incantation. Keep saying his name and his spirit sort of flickers, like lightning inside a thunder-cloud. Shakespeare asked the question, “What’s in a name?” I guess the answer is everything.

Dressed in his construction hat and clown collar, his work-coat, boots and jeans, toting his huge tool-box of art-supplies, Raymond Thunder-Sky was always moving from one part of Cincinnati to the next, in search of inspiration and subject matter.  From the late 70s till his death in 2004, he would set up makeshift easels in front of construction and demolition sites and then get to work.  His drawings, always done in magic-marker on card-stock, are of buildings being torn down and replaced by industries and projects imagined by Raymond:  Clown Suit Factories, Card Trick Amusement Parks, and Native American freeways.  Raymond’s father, Richard Bright-Fire Thunder-Sky, was a chief of the Mohawk tribe, and his mother was a descendent of an Austrian Nobleman.

No one ever really understood what Raymond was up to, however, and he spent a huge part of his life cloaked in mystery.  As we’ve gone about creating Thunder-Sky, Inc., we’ve heard all kinds of stories about encounters with Raymond from people across the area.  One gentleman called me a few months back, after coming across the Thunder-Sky, Inc. website (www.thunderskyinc.org).  He lives in North Carolina now, but back in the 80s, he said he used to ride the same Metro bus Raymond did.  One day he said three boys were bothering Raymond – making fun of him, talking really loud about the construction-worker/clown-suit outfit he was wearing.  In the middle of their taunts, Raymond stood up from his bus-seat and stared them right in the faces.  The guy from North Carolina says that cold, flat stare shut the boys up instantly.  Raymond’s face, he said, has stuck in his mind since then, as a sort of symbol of “standing up for yourself, letting people know you are not going to be messed with.”

Another story comes from a web-site Steve Kissing has set up to collect Raymond stories (www.raymondthundersky.com).  A contributor to Cincinnati Magazine, as well as a VP at Barefoot advertising here in town, Steve is on the Thunder-Sky, Inc. board.  Here’s the story submitted anonymously by someone who worked with Raymond:

“While in high school in 1974-1975 I worked in the kitchen of the Holiday Inn W.8th St. Cincinnati.  Raymond also worked there as the pot & pan washer.  The “Chief,” as he was known, loved to wash those pots & pans. This usually involved washing an entire day’s worth of cookware encrusted with dried up food.  This is all that Raymond wanted to do, and he did it very well.  We all understood that Raymond refused to do anything else in the kitchen  except pots & pans.  One evening,  the night dishwasher called in sick, and the new asst. manager ‘forced’ Raymond to wash dishes.  This was a very fast-paced job in this busy restaurant.  Several hours into the shift, the Chief was covered with food.  At that point, Raymond removed his clothing and ran them thru the dishwashing machine to clean them.  Needless to say, he wasn’t told to wash dishes any more.   Raymond was a very good artist with quite an imagination. He would walk around Downtown during the daytime before his shift at the “Inn” drawing pictures of buildings being torn down.  He seemed to be somewhat upset about the destruction of historical buildings. Many of his mid seventies drawings were on the back of restaurant paper place mats.”

Both of these memories point to Raymond’s dedication to his art, and also his sense of who he was not just as an artist but as a person.  He was complex, strong, and in charge of his own destiny.  He was living his art every day of his life.  Every week or so, we hear another story that illuminates his mystery, but in the end the beautiful mystery that he was will more-than-likely be his main legacy.  Even though he made drawings that were direct and meticulous on the surface, and even though he walked about the city dressed as a clown, Raymond’s strange, elusive charm evokes responses that seem to place him in a pantheon of characters that catch us all off guard while also making us feel at home, like Pee Wee Herman, E.T., or Edward Scissorhands.  Raymond created that character through sheer force of will, and performed in his own big-budget movie everyday of his life, riding the bus and walking from construction site to construction, drawing what he wanted to see.

In 1999 Bill Ross, a social-worker, artist and Thunder-Sky, Inc. cofounder, met Raymond when Raymond was placed on his caseload.  For some reason (perhaps Raymond sensed that Bill was an artist too), Raymond chose to show his drawings to Bill in a meeting.

“The point of the meeting was to try to get him to take better care of himself and to try to convince him to let his caregivers take him to the doctor and help him try to live healthier,” Bill says.  “This message never really sank in.  Looking back he had his own agenda for me at this meeting.  He wanted to make a connection with the world about his art.  This mysterious and very private man choosing this time to share something so deeply personal with me inspired and truly touched me.  I’ll never forget it.”

After that meeting, Bill introduced Raymond to me, and from that point on, Bill and I assisted with finding exhibition venues for Raymond and other self-taught artists with disabilities we had come across.  Eventually in 2003 we were able to establish Visionaries & Voices (V&V), an art-studio/day-program for artists with developmental disabilities here in Cincinnati.  V&V now helps many artists with developmental disabilities make art in two day-programs in the area (www.visionariesandvoices.com).

In 2004, Raymond Thunder-Sky passed away, leaving behind over 2,000 drawings, along with hundreds of tool-boxes, clown costumes, and construction paraphernalia he had picked up along his journeys throughout the city.  After Raymond’s death, Bill and I got so focused and diligent with ensuring that V&V became a flourishing organization that Raymond’s archive, and legacy, got put on the backburner.  Finally, last year (2009), we were able to establish Thunder-Sky, Inc., a gallery and arts organization dedicated to exhibiting and archiving Raymond’s work and maintaining his legacy through showcasing the works of other artists like him.

The inaugural exhibit, “Raymond Nation: Raymond Thunder-Sky’s Northside,” featured Raymond’s art, along with art made by local artists in tribute to him.  The gallery space is located in Northside, the Cincinnati neighborhood that Raymond grew up in.  In fact, an apartment he lived in as an adult is just one block down the street.  The opening event was attended by over 300 people. At the opening reception, a video featuring Mr. Thunder-Sky was debuted.  The video and other information about Raymond and the gallery can be accessed at www.thunderksyinc.org.  Since the opening, we’ve curated three other exhibits featuring artists that make work reminiscent of Raymond’s art.

The latest exhibit, “World Domination:  Antonio Adams & Tony Dotson” features the paintings and sculptures of Antonio Adams, another self-taught artist Bill and I came across doing our jobs as social workers.  We introduced Antonio to Raymond in 2000.  At this time, Antonio was a graduating high school student.  He was depressed and isolated, making art in his bedroom without a social outlet for his art or feelings.  When he met Raymond, something clicked, and as Antonio says, “He inspired me because he was a spiritual clown-artist and construction-artist.  He was happy being that.  He was very peaceful and he worked hard.”

Antonio’s brilliantly colored and intricately witty paintings and cat-sculptures are in collections across the United States.  He is the artist-in-residence at Thunder-Sky, Inc., overseeing the studio we’ve established in the basement under the gallery space, Under-Sky, Inc., an art-making workshop that occurs every Saturday.  Antonio’s two-person exhibit (along with outsider artist Tony Dotson) opens at Thunder-Sky, Inc. June 25, 2010 and will be on display through September 17, 2010.

Antonio references Raymond a lot in his work.  Raymond became not just an inspiration to Antonio, but a sort of totem-spirit.  In 2009, Antonio was able to create a mural memorializing Raymond.  Antonio did this with help from artist Cedric Cox, and high school students from a program called Artworks, which employs students to do arts-related jobs in the summer.  All of this mythologizing has culminated in the mural, which is on the side of the building that now houses one of V&V’s day-programs.  It is an expansive, Technicolor tribute that places Raymond at the center of a demolition site, with a speech-bubble floating beside his head (mimicking the way Raymond narrated all of his drawings):  “3841 Spring Grove Avenue is being town down to make way for the Raymond Thunder-Sky Construction Clown Amusement Park.”

Antonio says, “My mural and Thunder-Sky, Inc. are both fresh starts to know Raymond again.”

Back in 2004, during Raymond’s memorial, a Shriner’s clown chaplain read the “clown’s prayer” and placed a red nose on Raymond’s casket (making Raymond an honorary clown, which would have delighted him).  One of the stanzas in the poem goes, “As I stumble through this life/help me to create more laughter than tears/dispense more cheer than gloom/spread more cheer than despair.”

Raymond’s art and life have helped to create a cultural revolution here in Cincinnati – two studios for artists with disabilities, a gallery that showcases unconventional self-taught artists, and a gorgeous mural that depicts his brave life.  While we celebrate his legacy, we also continue to discover new and fascinating aspects of his life.  We also want to deepen our understanding of his art by curating and exhibiting new artists that embellish what he was pursuing aesthetically.  Raymond was and still is a natural resource.

Keith Banner, a social-worker for people with disabilities and a writer, lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He cofounded both Visionaries & Voices, and Thunder-Sky, Inc.   He teaches creative writing part-time at Miami University and has published two works of fiction, The Life I Lead, a novel, and The Smallest People Alive, a book of short stories.  He has published numerous short stories and essays in magazines and journals, including American Folk Art Messenger, Washington Square, Kenyon Review, and Third Coast.  He received an O. Henry prize for his short story, “The Smallest People Alive,” and an Ohio Arts Council individual artist fellowship for fiction. The Smallest People Alive was named one of the best books of the year by Publisher’s Weekly.