Painter Joseph T. Swanson and the Art Venues in Richmond, Indiana

Fiberglass Plant Smokestacks III, Joseph T. Swanson

Art All Over Richmond.

When visiting exhibits at the Richmond Museum of Art (RAM), an art lover can easily make a day of it, by exploring additional fine art and contemporary art exhibition galleries in the city. The RAM is just south of US 40 near downtown on the west side of the East Fork Whitewater River.  

Venues on the northside near the I-70 interchange include the MacDowell Gallery at Reid Health and the Tom Thomas Gallery in Whitewater Hall at I.U. East. The campuses of both Reid Health and I.U. East are adjacent.  

The RAM currently hosts a major solo exhibition by Mason Archie of Indianapolis, as well as works by  artist and educator, Elmira Kempton, a native of Richmond who studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and was later head of the Art Department at Earlham College. There is also a special small exhibition of  preparatory works by famed book illustrator, Garth Williams, who did the drawings for the beloved children's book Charlotte's Web.

The Thomas Gallery has a solo show, The Unpaved Road, by India Cruse Griffin, a Richmond artist, which will be covered in detail elsewhere in this blog. She currently has this solo show at I. U. East, as well as works at Reid Health and RAM, and is showing a body of work at Harrison Center in Indianapolis.

Reid Health's MacDowell Gallery currently has the exhibit Oil and Water by Joseph “Joe” T. Swanson. The gallery hangs along two long exhibition walls on the second floor above the main entrance. The space runs along a major hallway at the front of the facility, and is bathed in natural light from the front facing windows.   

 

Joseph T. Swanson's Oil and Water at MacDowell Gallery.

The title of the Swanson's show could have multiple connotations. The phrase refers to elements that don't necessarily blend well together or agree. Also, though, both substances are fluid and flowing, so the title could refer to that attribute of semisolid gracefulness that liquids possess. Both indeed are associated with art mediums, as in oil and watercolor paint. Finally, oil has an environmentally negative  connotation perhaps, whereas water invokes more uplifting and positive thoughts.

The oil of Richmond's light industrial and the water of its downtown river seem to serve as the painting grounds for the artist as he seeks inspiration from the reality of his local environment with its ancient natural beauty and the relative toxicity of industrialization.

Tie Plates on the Former GR&I, Joseph T. Swanson

Swanson presents works from two, if not more, separate threads of creative impulse, maybe.  Upon first look you might think two or more, if not multiple artists, are involved. The largest, surest group of pieces are the abstract and gestural works that many times note either a landscape origin, or object of landscape reference. The show statement that accompanies the exhibit describes a 'found object' discovery process in the artist's gestural painting.  It's not clear from the description whether Swanson starts with a landscape, or ends up there. His found object could be the painting itself, when the back and forth is finished.

The artist has a background in graffiti-inspired murals and the use of spray paint as a medium. This experience seems to inform his mark making and his color choices. Many of his paintings show the fluid and curving marks, and somewhat simple or reduced color palette, seen in monikers and tags on rolling freight-cars on railways. His paintings are devoid of any such obvious reference, though. Swanson has dissolved any link to such logos by splintering his marks and painting his strokes in a more haphazard and abstract manner. 

Prehistoric Cataract 6, Joseph T. Swanson

In Prehistoric Cataract 8, (and 6) the colors are limited to a handful of bold earth tones; blues, greens and browns. The physics and form of a cataract or waterfall is not easily seen in the work –  it is an overall abstract image.  But the tumult and chaos of the water can be imagined in looking at the churn of the brush strokes radiating about the canvas. Clear Creek Mid-Century is a mixture of architectural marks and the more organic forms, again in earthy colors – this time blue and brown. 

Similarly, in the series if three spray paint on canvas works, Fiberglass Plant Smokestacks (I,II, and III), (image at top of page) Swanson creates the landscapes abstractions with a series of limited colors per picture, about five colors each. If the industrial fiberglass plant is the subject, it appears as only a vestige of a sketchy echo, amid the overall graffiti inspired spray paint markings. The paintings seem abstracted studies of landscape motifs mixed with, and perhaps overpowered by, the brawn and muscle memory of a street artist's quick hand. 

Venetian Red Neapolitan Green, Joseph T. Swanson

That the restricted color wheel plays its roll in Swanson's art is further emphasized by his title on a few more pieces. Works named after, or with names including, colors contained in the paintings occurs in Venetian Red Neapolitan Green and Krylon Safety Plum Gamblin Manganese Violet. The latter title refers to two different paints; a fast drying, high-visibility spray paint used to mark hazard and caution areas and an artist color that contains manganese, which may or may not be toxic to humans.

Grasping at the meaning of Swanson's work by studying their titles and images is a bit slippery and elusive, a bit like grabbing at either oil or water and just touching on wet.

Joseph Swanson, educated at Herron School of Art, is from Richmond and has worked as an artist, an art educator and currently as Assistant Curator at RAM.

His exhibition at Reid Health continues through April.

Mark Diekhoff, February 2026

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Connection to Freedom: Works by Mason Archie at Richmond Art Museum

Mason Archie artworks at Richmond Art Museum
including far left, Freedom Stairs and left center Sunset on the Coffin Home

The Richmond Art Museum (RAM) presents Connection to Freedom: Works by Mason Archie, the first solo museum exhibition by the artist. Numerous paintings from two distinct bodies of recent work  are included in the exhibit. 

First, a grand collection of large-format, narrative landscapes from his Underground Railroad Series, and in addition, his equally impressive collection of canvases from his Landscapes in the City of Indianapolis.   

The RAM is a perfect venue for the exhibition of the artist who began his career in his birthplace, Dayton, Ohio, and now makes the Indianapolis area his home. Perfect in that Interstate 70 connects the two cities, with Richmond being about the halfway point. Perfect, also, in that RAM has a long and storied history in presenting the accomplished work of notable landscape painters in its region and beyond, including T. C. Steele, a painter of particular significance and influence for Archie. And perfect in that the two beautiful, adjacent rooms showing Archie's work provide feelings of both intimacy and spaciousness, attributes also possessed by the artist's paintings. 

A Road to Richmond.

Mason Archie, who began his career in the realm of commercial art in Dayton, Ohio, which included a billboard painting business, participated, as a fine artist in various art exhibits that garnered local attention in that city beginning about the early 2000s. 

In an exhibit, Who Are We? We Are: Indianapolis and Dayton Artists Speak, a group show that opened first at the Indianapolis Art Center in April 2001, and then in Dayton the following February 2002 at the Dayton Visual Arts Center  and the LRC Gallery – Sinclair Community College. 

A few years later, in March 2006, Archie participated in an auction and exhibition of work held by the African American Visual Artists Guild, a Dayton organization. 

By July of the same year, Archie was exhibiting with the Collective Art Gallery in a group exhibition, Conversations in Blackness, in the Fountain Square arts district of Indianapolis.

And the following August, Archie, by then living in Speedway, Indiana, would enter the 82nd Hoosier Salon, held in Indianapolis. He would win the Best Traditional Landscape Award for his oil painting Descent in the Fog. 

In January 2012, the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis would present the exhibit Represent that included Mason Archie and 23 other artists, as the January 15, 2012, Indianapolis Star describes,

“(The) exhibition...focuses on African-American artists in Indiana and how they have influenced the Hoosier state.

The exhibit...includes 40 pieces, ranging from painting and sculpture to photography and textiles. 

The museum included several historical pieces that were already in its permanent collection, but... (focused)...on contemporary works.” 

When the new Sydney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital opened in December 2013 in Indianapolis, it included  new works by 18 visual artists installed throughout the facility. Mason Archie was chosen for the project, and thus joined a shared heritage of artists decorating the hospital over the years. 

The facility, called City Hospital in an earlier iteration about 100 years prior, began its long history of healing and art when a large group of Indiana artists decorated its newly remodeled women's and children's wards. Artists in those earlier times included T. C Steele, William Forsyth, William Edouard Scott and Dorothy Morlan. 

And in 2025, Mason Archie had work represented in the Indiana State Museum show John Wesley Hardrick: Through the Eyes of an Artist, and also in a Detroit, Michigan, group show held at the Carr Center called Everyday People, Part 2.

A Creek, a River, a Reservoir and Some Trees (Not to Mention Skies).

The Indianapolis paintings of Mason Archie are all large, salon-sized pieces executed in a realistic manner, that seem slightly idealized in overall effect. The oil on linen works portray a style and subject matter that is reminiscent of Romanticism at times. Several pictures are evocative and moody in a uplifting or dreamy way, depicting a heightened realism in the distilled perfection of the vision portrayed.  

Under the Learning Tree by Mason Archie

Judging by their recurring appearance, Archie has a fondness for sycamore trees, which are a major focus in several pictures. In Under the Learning Tree, a smartly-dressed man reads a newspaper while sitting atop a picnic table in a park setting under the dappled shade of a large sycamore tree. The painting is more realist than impressionist, but Archie has captured some fleeting light effects wonderfully. The cool shade surrounds the man in the foreground, while sunshine blazes on trees and the pond in the distant background.

The irregular and interestingly shaped canopies at the crest of tall trees dominate some paintings, while the unique brown to white fractured transition of the tree bark, signature to sycamores, provides a primary center of focus in others. 

Some include figures, such as a second picture with a man reading a paper in the park, as portrayed in Best of Simple, and one of a woman walking on a gray, rainy day. In that painting, Sycamore at Senate and Fall Creek, an autumn drizzle is warmed by the orange leaves and grass that contrast with the teal umbrella the woman holds. 

Trees provide a more supporting role in other paintings in which water dominates.  Eagle Creek Reservoir is a picture composed and divided into four roughly rectangular quadrants of sky, water, land and trees. It possesses a unique balance. And the additional visual elements of curving dirt tracks leading the eyes deeper into the space, and also the placement of a couple of boats on the water which seem to end in deep distance at a dam, keep the viewer looking around the painting. 

The large diptych, Morning on White River, portrays a wide panorama of peaceful morning solitude along the shore of the river. The scene is covered in the long shadows of early light. One can almost hear the trickle of water through the outcropping of large river rocks near the shore.

A mood of stronger feeling is experienced in some other paintings. The word sublime comes to mind in the winter view in Eagle Creek Park, with its expanse of dim sky and dormant, brown vegetation stretching from one side to the other amid a wetland freezing over with ice.  And the roiling menace of not-so-fair-weather skies agitate and awe in the two pictures Morning on the White River, After the Storm and Fall Creek at M.L.K. Jr. Street Bridge. 

 

The Story of a Freedom Road.

For Mason Archie, his personal connection to freedom may well be his immersion in moments of a  wondrous nature of trees, skies and waterways. His often solitary figures, amid the beauty of the surrounding, could be metaphor for the artist himself, traveling through the real world of strife and sadness, yet focusing on the ever-presence and permanence of goodness, joy and spacious exhilaration that is always there to discovered. 

In the Underground Railroad Series of paintings in the adjoining room,  an epic visual narrative is displayed. The works, and their accompanying notes, tell a story of brave fugitives all across the Eastern United States, at a time when freedom was just a dream for many. 

The paintings are like chapters of many heroes' journeys, a collection of their individual stories, that when taken together hint at the enormity of suffering and fear in those times. Archie's accomplishment is a historic bravery portrayed and an all-to-rare compassion painted. The exhibit should really be experienced in person,and in full, to grasp the overall story and effect of the body of work.

Pathway on Roosevelt Island, #2 by Mason Archie

In the painting Pathway on Roosevelt Island, #2,  we have a figure on a bicycle, stopped at a fork in the path. One foot resting on the ground, as if thinking, while in the shade for the moment, which path to take going forward. Both directions appear sunlit and beautiful, both lined by sycamore trees. The dappled light does not really lead he way. The bicyclist must make the choice.

In Sunset on the Coffin Home, a picture purchased for the RAM collection, the bicyclist again appears. The mode of transport alone is indicative of the childhood feeling of freedom, and motion, air on the face and the world rushing by. 

It is a sunset painted on the walls of the home of a Quaker couple in Fountain County, Indiana. Levi and Catherine Coffin, who made a choice, to be, not just anti-slavery, but active hosts for numerous fugitive slaves who took refuge in their home. 

And in Archie's Freedom Stairs , a mythological freedom becomes real, as the stairway to heaven portrayed is actually to Ripley, Ohio, an important stop on the Underground Railroad. 

In the waters of the Ohio River, flowing between slave lands and free, there must have been the limbo of  disorientation – how can one be not enslaved anymore, but not yet free? A golden confusion, until stumbling onto the northern shore – a path out of the deep forest, and up the ravine, across the steps into light.

partial view, Landscapes in the City of Indianapolis room
of the Mason Archie exhibit at Richmond Art Museum

The exhibit Connection to Freedom: Works by Mason Archie continues at Richmond Art Museum until March 28.

Mark Diekhoff, February 22, 2026

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Ruthven Byrum – An Anderson Artist's Formative Years

Ruthven Holmes Byrum as a young man

Idyllic Adventures of an Artistic Boy.

The boy was born Ruthven. Likely of Scottish origin and referring to a certain locale in that country  around Perth and the River Almond. The name translates roughly as 'red place,' most likely, again referring to the landscape thereabouts. Ruthven's family name was Byrum, a name that would become well known in Anderson in the first half of the 20th Century.

His father Noah Byrum and uncle Enoch Byrum were founding leaders of the Anderson, Indiana-based non-Pentecostal, protestant Church of God. Both brothers were involved in the publishing arm of the church, called the Bible Trumpet Company, which was the major mode of evangelical outreach for the church  in its early years. The Byrum brothers, and their families, followed the relocation of Bible Trumpet from its Michigan location, where Ruthven was born, to Anderson, Indiana in 1906. 

Ruthven Byrum, like a typical youngster of his era, would begin to test the limit of his curiosity and adventure, and his growing strength, both physical and mental, soon after moving to Anderson, Indiana. 

So it was, in 1907, the boy became more widely known in the new city of his youth, by making the the third page of the The Anderson Herald on November 17, with his accidental adventure as follows,

“Ruthven Byrum, son of N.H. (Noah Holmes) Byrum, near the Gospel Trumpet home in Park Place, fell about twenty feet from a hickory tree yesterday afternoon and received painful injuries. He is expected to recover. He is eleven years old and was with some companions. By striking limbs of the tree the force of the fall was broken.”

The hard knock from the hickory, both the source of his exciting climb, and the near disaster of his fall, was the only reported misadventure of young Ruthven in Anderson. In contrast, his boyhood was was filled with idyllic events, perhaps commonplace in those simpler times, and with the educational and athletic challenges that would serve his overall development as a young man. We know of these things now, because in those days, such things were covered by the newspapers, whose columns Ruthven filled constantly, especially during his high school years.

He was put to volunteer at the annual camp meetings for the church by his father Noah, working in the book store booth as a part of the elaborate outdoor gathering which drew thousands of visitors. He attended lots of parties, we know by the society page coverage in The Herald; Halloween costume parties with other children, cake and ice cream extended family events, and even a topsy-turvy themed party on one occasion. 

In high school, he would try out for basketball, making second team. His first cousin Arlo Byrum, Uncle Enoch's son, the same age as Ruthven, would be first team captain, and a local star. Ruthven and Arlo would share many milestones and adventures in the high school years, although they were on distinctly different paths. As mentioned, Arlo mastered basketball, whereas Ruthven excelled in high school leadership, attaining both vice-president and then president of the student body senate. 

That high school senate would hold public debates and Ruthven would argue one side or the other at times, on such topical concerns as women suffrage, prohibition, and the need, or not, of a merchant marine force.

Around this time, when Ruthven was sixteen-years-old, on December 22, 1912, newspapers reported the first artistic inklings, in two different small articles on the same day, that would note the beginnings of Ruthven Byrum's life calling and career. 

In The Anderson Herald,

“Ruthven H. Byrum...is attracting considerable attention as an artist for a lad of sixteen years. A number of his landscape  sketches have been sent  to eastern cities and are winning popularity among art critics. This week Mr. Byrum is painting pictures at the White House for the public.”

And in The Indianapolis Star, 

“Ruthven H Byrum...after two years of study in art has realized enough money from the sale of pictures throughout the East to pay his expenses for a course in art at a conservatory in Paris and will leave for that city soon. Several of his productions have received honorable mention in art reviews in New York.” 

The newspaper evidence of the training and travel in the East and to Paris is not apparent. Perhaps the trip to France was canceled or postponed for some unknown reason. This was still before war in Europe but was after the April sinking of the Titanic in the Atlantic crossing on its maiden voyage.  

After graduation in May 1914, the shared exploits of the Byrum cousins, Ruthven and Arlo, would be reported in the  August 30, 1914, Anderson Herald. On a page covered with the harrowing develops in the war in Europe, both on land at at sea, the innocent yet arduous, adventures of the recent graduates stands in stark contrast,

“Word has been received here from Arlo and Ruthven Byrum who are on a bicycle trip through northern Michigan. At this time the boys are enjoying a week's long fishing at Torch Lake, Antrim County, Michigan. They report that the fishing is extra fine in the streams around.”

It was not until a year later, in summer, when the cousins, again as a pair, would visit both Bloomington and Valparaiso. In may have been college visits. 

They both would enter Indiana University at Bloomington in the fall of 1915. And after four years, Arlo will have become star player and captain of the I.U. Basketball team in the 1919-20 season. Ruthven would study art.

Ruthven Byrum studied under Robert E. Burke, professor and landscape painter, while at I.U., where he would earn a degree in fine arts. Byrum would later cite T.C. Steele as providing inspiration during his I.U. years. Perhaps the art student sought out the master at his home studio and gallery at the House of the Singing Winds in nearby Brown County, because Steele was not to begin his affiliation with the University until 1922.

Study at the Chicago Art Institute and First Exhibits.

After graduation, Byrum returned to his parents home in Anderson, and was a swimming instructor for a year. The next phase of his artistic training is reported in The Anderson Herald on January 16, 1927,

“When he was twenty-three, (Byrum) entered the Art Institute at Chicago. The first three years in the Institute are taken up with the various expressions of portrayal. Perspective, color, design, chiaroscuro, were part of Byrum's first three years. Under Leon Kroll famous modernist and follower of George Bellows, he studied design. 

The effect of this modern portrayal (as championed by Bellows and Kroll) was well balanced by Byrum's work under Karl Buehr, whose landscapes and portraiture are considered exceptional fine. (Beuer) gains his effects in a more classical method with the pervading tone of simplicity through all his work. (Kroll and Buehr) exerted a powerful influence on Ruthven Byrum's work.

After the usual three year course in the Institute, he stayed on two years to perfect his method of work, by watching and copying the methods of the great painters of America who have been drawn to the Chicago Art Institute, Byrum has been able to develop a style and a worth which place him in the same category with our noted Indiana painters.”

During the five years in training in Chicago, Byrum would often return to Anderson at holidays and during summer breaks. In this period of time, he would paint a mural and have his first solo exhibition in Anderson and travel to Oregon to sketch the northwest landscape and climb Mt. Hood.

About the mural, the November 10, 1923, Anderson Daily Bulletin, reports,

 “Ruthven Byrum, 24...has completed a mural painting on the wall over the pulpit of the Church of God in Park Place...The painting...is a pastoral scene entitled The Eastern Shepherd and is a splendid work of art. A shepherd and fourteen sheep are shown in the painting. The picture is ten feet high and eight feet wide. The artist started the work last Monday and finished it today.”

A year later, the same paper reports about the Mt. Hood expedition, in the August 22 edition,

“Ruthven Byrum, son of Mr. and Mrs. N. H. Byrum, of this city, is in the West with his parents and his brother Myrl, on a tour. An account of an interesting hike up Mt. Hood is contained in a letter from Byrum to a friend...”

The column continues with excerpts from Byrum's letter to a friend Bill,

“We pulled out of Portland...Saturday afternoon, drove 50 miles to the government camp on Mt. Hood, and hiked four miles to the timber line...just before it was too dark to see...It is very wonderful to sit around a roaring camp fire...singing and having a big time...

(The next morning) We took our time eating breakfast and painting our faces so they would not blister, and didn't get started till nearly 6 o'clock. The next four and a half miles took about seven and a half hours. It was most the way over glaciers. It got steeper all the time, until the last 500 feet was at least an 85 degree angle.” 

The letter details the harrowing and exhausting final ascent, and the climb down, the letter reading,

“Coming down was the fun. It took an hour and a half where it took seven and a half going up. That 500-foot slide was hard on the seats of our trousers, but was the biggest coasting I ever did...The rest of the glacier was fun, too. We ran down, and now and then would take a tumble in the snow heels over head. It was the greatest hike I ever took.”   

 Byrum concludes his letter to a friend regarding his overall impressions of the West,

“California is all right, but I like Oregon much better. They say you like the states better the longer you stay. But give me Indiana compared to the other places I have been.”

The adventure of Byrum's first solo exhibition would occur about a year later, as reported in the September 9, 1925, Anderson Daily Bulletin. The small notice shared a front page screaming headline about a dirigible crash in Caldwell, Ohio, of a huge airship called Shenandoah. The small article titled Anderson Society Sponsors Exhibit, reported,

“Twenty paintings by Ruthven Byrum...constitute the annual exhibit of the Anderson Society of Artists at the Y.M.C.A.  The paintings, most of which are portraits, are receiving many high compliments and are drawing much interest.”

It should be noted that Byrum himself was a founder of the fledgling Society of Artists, and was beginning to teach classes in art about this time out of his studio in the Griffith Block in  downtown Anderson.

A year later, he would spend time in Brown County painting the peak season of color, one imagines, as reported in the Anderson Daily Bulletin, October 25, 1926,

“Ruthven Byrum and Warner H. Clayton, local artists, have returned from Brown county, where they spent the week end as guests of Prof. Robert Burke, head of the art department at Indiana University. The short visit was spent at the studio lodge of Prof. Burke, overlooking Nashville.

The Anderson artists spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday sketching scenes of picturesque Brown county and brought back to this city about thirteen sketches which will be exhibited at the annual exhibit...sponsored by the Anderson Society of Artists.” 

Byrum's sketches would be seen in the upcoming days, not only in Anderson, but in Indianapolis, where he would begin a series of solo shows that would be covered extensively by that city's best art critic, Lucille Morehouse, in her Indianapolis Star Sunday column, In the World of Art.

On a Bigger Stage.

The first of three solo exhibits of works by Byrum, all at Pettis Gallery, was held in January of 1927. It garnered many mentions in the Indianapolis  newspapers, the most thorough and detailed by Lucille Morehouse in her Star coverage on January 23,

“Ruthven Byrum...is holding his first exhibit in Indianapolis, with twenty-five oil paintings at Pettis gallery....

Thirteen portraits, nine landscapes, one figure composition in landscape setting, one flower study and one still life make up the exhibit.”

Morehouse goes on to provide her opinion regarding both portrait work and landscape,

“Two portraits that might be regarded as outstanding are H. E. Briggs and Self Portrait. Of unusual interest from the standpoint of composition...Mr. Briggs...is a study in character that portrays a type given to philosophical thought. The sitter appears to be ready in speech, quick witted, a bit cynical, but good-naturedly so...

The artist is a bit over-zealous...in his effort to make the accessories do his bidding...

In the Briggs painting the glossy wood and the patterned cane of the chairback come forward too much.”

And about landscape,

“He handles hazy atmosphere and distances with softly glowing light satisfactorily, but his landscapes, in most cases, lack vigor, definiteness in line and convincing construction.”

She sums up her thoughts and first impressions,

“On the whole I like the honest serious work of Ruthven Byrum, the sincerity of purpose and the stamp of what seems to be his own fine character, leaving its imprint on that which comes from his brush.”

Her listing of some titles of his landscapes provides evidence of the subjects he found interesting at the time;  Mysterious River Bank, View on the Dunes, Tree Group, Brown County Road and House on the River Bank.   

Autumn on the White River, Ruthven Byrum

 

The following spring, Byrum exhibited a new multi-figure painting, first at the Anderson Society of Artists exhibit where it earned a 3rd prize, and then as part of the 20th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis. The March 26, 1927, Indianapolis News described the picture,

“Indicating that Indiana artists are alive to all Hoosier interests is a canvas showing two teams of basketball players in full action. Basketball by Ruthven H. Byrum has the life and the vigor of the game. Few artists would think of looking to so violently active a sport as an inspiration for an art product. Close study and careful delineation make this a notable canvas.”

His other painting in the same show is covered by a competing paper, The Indianapolis Times, in its March 30 edition,

“Man with a Pipe, by Ruthven H. Byrum is a problem worked out in grays – all clean, thin paint, extremely simplified in color.”

And then a month or so later, as part of the 30th Annual Exhibit of Paintings by Indiana Artists in Richmond, Indiana at Morton High School, another painting by Byrum was covered.  The April 11, 1927 Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram  reported that his Portrait, Miss Vandiver (later called Girl with the Pink Hat) earned a third place honorable mention.

The September 14 Anderson Herald announced yet two more award winning pictures by Ruthven Byrum that year, this time in the Indiana State Fair arts competition; Portrait of Rev. Floyd Appleton (later called Ph. D)  a fifth prize in the portrait category, and Hollyhocks, a second prize in flower pictures.  The short article also note the flower picture was painted from a window looking out in the home of Judge Lawrence Mays of Pendleton, Indiana. 

Byrum's second solo show at Pettis Gallery in Indianapolis would occur that same year in November. It is interesting to note that at the same time there was a plethora of interesting exhibits around the city. 

At the Woman's Department Club on North Meridian Street, there was a memorial display of artworks by J. Ottis Adams showing pictures from each period of the artist's life. At his Paradise Hills Studio north of Fort Benjamin Harrison, Frederick Polley was showing his etchings, drypoints, drawings and small paintings.  At John Hardrick's Studio on Indiana Avenue, the artist was showing thirty landscape paintings and Portrait of Frederick E. Shortmeier.

Byrum's Pettis show is reviewed by Lucille Morehouse in the November 11, 1927 Indianapolis Star, where she speaks admirably of the portraits Ph.D and Girl with the Pink Hat. About Byrum's other pictures she writes succinctly,

“There are several sprightly little flower paintings, handled realistically and decoratively. The landscapes are mostly autumn scenes near Anderson.”

On February 8, 1928, Ruthven Byrum would marry Miss Mae Valentine of Portland, Oregon. They would make there home in Anderson. 

In the 31st Annual Indiana Artists in Richmond, Byrum would show two portraits and a large oil titled Hazy Afternoon which depicted a scene of rooftops in Anderson according to the Indianapolis Star on April 8, 1928. 

Apple Blossoms, Ruthven Byrum

Byrum would again win awards at the Indiana State Fair that year in various categories, as reported in the September 2, 1928, Anderson Herald. 

“Ruthven Byrum...won unusual distinction in the art exhibit at the Indiana state fair  when judges awarded him four premiums on pictures he is exhibiting...

Mr. Byrum was given a second premium...(for human figures or animal pictures)...on his painting of the scene on the north side of the court house  last summer for the closing of Anderson's first Dollar Day. Two awards for landscape painters were given  him for a picture, The Sand Dunes, painted last year while visiting along Lake Michigan, and for a painting, Apple Blossoms, a study of an apple orchard near Daleville.

Mr. Byrum also won a premium  for painting of the human figure, with a painting of his mother, the picture known as Inspirational Corner.”

Glacier Laker, Ruthven Byrum

Lucille Morehouse, for the third time in two years, covered a Byrum solo show at Pettis Gallery in Indianapolis. He observations are contained in her Sunday column in the Indianapolis Star dated December 16, 1928,

“Outstanding canvases in Ruthven Byrum's exhibit are a large figure composition, Dollar Day, that was a prize winner at the Indiana state fair, and a mountain scene, Inspiration Point, which is a glorious view of Mt. Hood's snow-patterned peak in bright sunlight. Mr. Byrum had a two months painting excursion in Oregon and Glacier park, Montana, from July 15 to Sept. 15. He said...Inspiration Point (is) where the view of Mt. Hood is one of the best to be had.”

St. Mary's Lake, a trifle larger canvas than Inspiration Point, should be viewed across the room and dwelt upon long enough for the loveliness of tonality to be fully enjoyed. Both mountain and lake seem to belong to fairyland...it seems like a dream mountain.”

 She mention two other Oregon pictures, Crown Point on the Columbia and Oregon Breakers. About the  Anderson multi-figure painting she write,

“...Dollar Day might be said to be reminiscent of some of the figure groups  that were painted by George Bellows. This does not mean that the work is any the less stamped with Mr. Byrum's individuality.”

She then describes portions of the picture,

“The blindfolded boy scout in the copper tub, the man at the right with a megaphone, the bandman seated off at the left...”

She continues to describe the paintings obscure narrative, then settles on an helpful admonishment to the viewer, in summary,

“Enjoy the picture from the art side and don't bother your wits about the 'story' side. I hope Mr. Byrum sends his Dollar Day to some of the big exhibitions  and then paints some more pictures along the same line.”

 

The End of the Beginning.

Ruthven Holmes Byrum, at just over thirty years old, had lived twenty years in Anderson since boyhood. He was newly married and on the precipice of whole new lives of experience. 

The coming years would bring further art training in Paris and Munich. His family life would be blessed by a child. He would return to Anderson and be a founder of the art program at Anderson College (now University). 

But that all happens in the last half of his life. This was the story of his first half. 

The first half when his love of art began when he painted a landscape as a child, and straight away he sold it to his dad for a dollar. In tree climbing, and basketball, mountain climbing and art, a little support and the spark of encouragement can lead to beautiful things. 

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

Lake and Mountains, Ruthven Byrum, AWI Collection

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'Comfort' by Philip Campbell at Harrison Center

Comfort by Philip Campbell, Harrison Center, Indianapolis

Audience Participation Overdose Trauma.

Longtime Indianapolis artist Philip Campbell, most known for his wood carvings, exhibited his interactive installation, Comfort, at Harrison Center in October. The artwork consisted of a fabric-clad hospital bed surrounded by a similar colorful quilt that curtained the space around the bed. The familiar appearing patchwork design evokes the ambiance of grandma's house, antique malls, rocking chairs and prayer.

The fiber art in both components was composed of sewn together rectangular fragments from common clothing items such as denim jeans. The jeans were key, as they retained their pockets. The pockets were for the audience participation part of the post modern artwork, evoking social themes related to drug addiction such as overdose, rehab and recovery.

Inspired by hospital emergency rooms overwhelmed by opioid cases, Campbell has softened the anguish of the all too often endpoint of addiction by clothing the sterile environment in the well worn comfort clothes of people who were once patients or in narcotic withdrawal recovery. The use of quilted fabric echoes an earlier epidemic of suffering by evoking memory of the world's largest community folk art project, the AIDS memorial quilt.

Comfort in a Name.

Comfort is a metaphor for the very real phenomenon of something the artist refers to as the 'pink cloud' effect of early drug addiction recovery, where there is a feeling of euphoric well-being as the patient, surrounded by a recovery team, and perhaps hopeful family and friends, begins to shed the outer layers of destructive addictive behaviors and self-destructive rationalizations in an effort to begin the healing process. Pink clouds, like all clouds, are transitory though. The patient must be braced for the long haul and difficult times ahead.

The interactive feature invited gallery viewers to fill out memorial cards with the names of personal lives lost to addiction. Then to exchange the cards with the ephemera and paraphernalia, all too familiar to the addict, in the pockets. A 12-step plan outline or a Narcan nasal spray swapped for the name of one who has no use for such things anymore.

The comfort, then, for the many people affected by the loss of those who did not survive the pink cloud and its aftermath, is the relic of their name on paper and some old clothes. With an American epidemic as common and widespread as apple pie, no matter how you slice it, or dress it up, especially since fentanyl, they are gone.

Comfort here, is both beautiful and sad – like graveyards and memories can be, but hospital rooms seldom are.

Comfort by Philip Campbell

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025 

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

101st Hoosier Salon at the Indiana State Museum

101st Hoosier Art Salon, Indiana State Museum

101st Annual Hoosier Art Salon – Tradition and Variety.

The start of the second century of the annual Hoosier Salon exhibit has closed at the end of last month at the Indiana State Museum. Displayed in a large gallery of four long walls separated by central display section to break up the space and add hanging for the numerous works included in the show. As in prior shows, the prize winning categories for works in all media included Landscape, Portrait, Still Life, Figurative, Animal and Abstract. There was also a 3-Dimensional category for sculpture and related works. 

Jurors Anne Blair Brown and Hector Acuna curated the exhibit that included 145 works by 129 artists.

The works were arranged randomly around the gallery as opposed to gathered in groups of like subject or style. It produced the atomizing overall effect that is expected in large group shows with many artworks that can be a bit overwhelming due to the multitude of genres, techniques and colors. The two-dimensional works were hung in a modified salon-style, just two deep, that provided for uncluttered viewing when observing an artwork at close distance.

The exhibit was well attended on its last Saturday with many visitors, in small groups or alone with the art, making their way among the works, and spending time before their favorites.

Landscapes – including Best of Show.

Carol Strock-Wasson's Blue Gray Winter Light was awarded Best of Show. The large oil landscape of a snowy, winter scene delivers its title in cool to cold tones. The desolate expanse of its gray winter sky envelopes a large snow covered field that dominates the picture with a blueish hue that chills to the bone. Further cold tones of a deep evergreen tree that frames the right foreground, and a distant skeletal treeline of brown/purple, continue the somber mood. Only the barely registering orange/brown of the  scant fall foliage remaining on a few trees, and of the dormant summer grass peaking through wheel ruts in the snow, contain a hint of fading warmth. The path leads diagonally from the picture's foreground center back into the depth of the picture, to one bright spot of whitest gray in distant snow. 

The artist has another exceptional piece in the show, also a landscape, but executed in pastel, Water in the Ditch. 

As cool is her painting, warm is her pastel. Shades of bright orange and yellow color the foliage of brush and spent wildflowers that line a reflective, brightened creek in in the slanting soft sunlight of a muted harvest sky. Only the purple-appearing shadow of a treeline in the distance of the picture cools the mellow glow.

Although this artist's work does not break new ground, indeed her winter scene is reminiscent of the solemn winter works of Indianapolis artist Dorothy Morlan, who created similar paintings a century ago, Strock-Wasson's pictures indicate a mature perfection of handling and a dexterity of mood creation through her virtuoso use of color.

The winter painting can be compared with another entry, Chilled Awakening, by Curt Stanfield, also a blue and snowy winter scene.  Other than the season and the overall color, Stanfield's work shares little  in common with the Strock-Wasson piece. Stanfield achieves the shock of cold temperature through the use of a luminous pure blue to paint shadowed light on the snow which dominates two-thirds of the picture. A mere three colors, white, brown and blue, build the expressionist composition of bare, needle-like trees and the corresponding zigzag of their shadows. The paintings jarring effect is quite distinct from Strock-Wasson's more subtle use of muted cool colors. 

Another artist with two entries in the exhibit was David M. Seward, whose Aqua House won a 3rd Place in the Landscape/Cityscape category.  Experiencing the large oil painting in person, has an interesting effect. A combination of the unique close perspective of the house on the left side of the painting which angles the eye to the pictures center with its color-field wedges of sunny roof, and sun and shaded siding. Centering the eye to the same sweet spot is the arc of the bending grass, a bit blurry as if from a strong breeze in the pictures foreground. The center of interest is the aqua porch and a single pink and puny flowering plant, perhaps peony or rosebush, and the red interior front room seen in an open window between blue shutters. A spring tree, brightly lit by noonday sun, and more sketchily in the distance are a fence, a neighboring building, a rolling hillside and bit of blue sky that complete the scene.

Bridge to Heaven, David M. Seward, 101st Hoosier Salon

Seward's other entry, also an oil painting, Bridge to Heaven,  has a similar off-kilter feel.  Again the artist paints a scene whose novel composition creates a visceral sensation. The slight vortex of Aqua House is replaced in this painting by a subliminal spiral. The picture is of a bridge over a stream. The viewer stands in the painter's shoes in cool shade aside a massive concrete pier supporting one end of a steel truss bridge on the picture's left. This spot, amid a wildly corkscrewing composition made up of the alternating stripes of the bridge's shadow on the shoreline, and the steel work of the bridge itself. The spiral concludes across the river where the bridge and its shadow, reflected on the water, meet in a pincer point of blackness offset by the brightest glow of green leaves that curtain the right side of the view.

In both paintings, the artist's builds interesting pictures with idiosyncratic points of view that create drama and eye movement by observing severely receding lines of perspective.    

Perhaps the show's most surprising landscape, upon close inspection, is Adagio by Stephen B. Moss. The musical meaning of the title is 'slow moving', which may refer to the movement of time across the seasons over the course of a year, or the movement of the sun from dawn to dusk. The picture's subject is a field of brambles in familiar fall colors under a thinly cloud-veiled sky. But 'slow' may also refer to the painstaking  manner of the acrylic painting's creation. Like a gem cutter, Moss has a amassed his scene through the application of thousands of precision-edged facets of layered colors. Not strokes of paint, but micro-shards of irregular geometries;  rectangles, triangles and dashed lines. The carefully painted shapes operate like brushstrokes, with their haphazard arrangement of pixels resulting in an amazingly organic simulacrum of the nature of nature itself.

Rockport Shoppers, Jerry Smith, 101st Hoosier Salon

Other more tradition landscapes in the show include Justin Vining's Carb Day 2025, which was a 2nd Place winner in the category, Jerry Smith's two oils, Autumn Passage and Rockport Shoppers, and Summer Day, a pastel by Mary Ann Davis. The Vining painting and Smith's small town street scene each show the decisive and rapid application of colorful brushstrokes by their painters. Vining paints with a varied vocabulary of strokes, each to a distinct purpose such as linear marks for architecture and pointillist crowds. Smith's vibrant, sunny street is composed mostly of a chaotic mix of thick, brave dabs of paint applied every which way, to pleasing effect.

Calle 12 barrio San Carlos, Mary E, Mindiola, 101st Hoosier Salon

A vibrant and colorful street scene of primary and complimentary colors is the subject of Mary E. Mindiola's Calle 12 barrio San Carlos. The large collage presents a red car in the foreground offset by rolling and verdant fields, a purple street contrasting with nearby sunny walls, and the blue shadows of distance and sky as opposed to the orange roofs of houses.  

An offbeat landscape is seen in the John Hrehov oil, Neighbor Flowers. Back-lit limelight hydrangeas and a colorful bed of mixed zinnias dominate the foreground of the painting that retreats in a blurry distance, perhaps true to a photographic source. Between the retreating perspective of  two gray buildings, a bit of fuzzy tree and sky, and an out of focus figure watering with a garden hose making a bright spray of white and blue at the center of the picture. 

Music City Liquors, Brian Burt, 101st Hoosier Salon

Two works that stretch the landscape category are Brian Burt's Music City Liquors and Samuel Leopold's Cross-Connect. Burt's meticulous oil of a road sign melds the influences of pop, photo-realism, trompe l'oeil and landscape. Leopold's landscape, if it is that, is a symmetric view from above a city intersection of high-rise buildings converging. From the bird's eye vantage, the picture looks to be a hard-edge abstraction at first glance.  But a second look, and upon further review, Leopold's painting may just be a homage to the 2D universe of early video games.

Ctoss-Connect, Samuel Leopold, 101st Hoosier Salon

Portraits and Figures.

The glassy shine seen across the gallery room makes one think that Sue P. Gillock's Reflections of a Celebration is perhaps a large, colorful watercolor under glass. Actually, it is a portrait of a woman in an oil painting dominated by the natural light reflection of numerous windows around the curving surfaces of two wine glasses, toasted and tapping, from the close perspective of an unseen celebrant. Reds, Merlot and flesh tones otherwise prevail in the canvas which oozes of a warm, coziness.

Reflections of a Celebration, Sue P. Gillock, 101st Hoosier Salon

Russell Recchion's Tie-Dye Muse is a traditional seated portrait, with its female subject facing the painter, but looking away toward the natural light of a window. The light reminds one of Vermeer, as does the sitter's antique wood carved chair. But she is not distant, as the Dutch master portrayed, but rather intimate and close to the painter. Her face reveals no clear emotion, but her slightly upraised eyes present a slight yearning to her otherwise tranquil state. Beautifully and expertly painted and composed, with a small circular religious painting crowning the top background above the woman's head.

Tie-Dye Muse, Russell Recchion, 101st Hoosier Salon

She wears a tie-dye T-shirt, in well worn rainbow colors. The liveliest light is glinted from the woman's earring, a medallion necklace, and her eyes.

Inspired by Adventure by Debra Huse presents a sunny nautical theme, not unlike last year's Best of Show watercolor and gouache, Pop's Straw Hat, by Diane Wunderlich. In a typical contemporary impressionist manner, Huse has painted a photograph in oil of two children captaining a speedboat with a flag in the background. 

Me, Myself and I - I, Sepideh Motevasel, 101st Hoosier Salon

The triple abstract mixed media collage portrait, Me, Myself and I – I, by Sepideh Motevasel, presents  a three-faced contemplative figure amid a busy and colorful abstract design of various harshly contrasting textures. Head-like and animal-like forms swirl about the main subject gowned in green. The creatures could be menacing, but are rendered as dreamy apparitions, more pretty that they are scary.   

Winning 2nd Place Figure, was Jeanette Hammerstein and her oil, Are you there God, it's me. The meaning of the title is elusive in the study of a woman pouring water into a teacup. The woman wears a red puffy coat in the picture set in somber shades of dark aqua and green. It may just be an exercise in contrasting color. Ghostly figures sit at a table in the background. A more visible man, just over her shoulder, gives an impression of a white bearded wisdom. But it's only his non-shaded face beneath the bill of his trucker cap. The woman's side glance adds to the unknowing.  But there is nothing there to be nervous about that can be seen in the picture, other than sliced lemons that seem harmless enough.

John Carter's 3rd Place Figure, Santa Fe Shawl, is pure impressionism with a style influenced by Renoir and a mirrored double portrait that reminds of Manet. It takes a busy brushwork of glittering strokes to subdue the fire of Santa Fe color and pattern, and only the woman's finely painted profile and a small dish of oranges in the background can survive the opulent shimmer.

Snow Queen, India Cruse-Griffin, 101st Hoosier Salon

A colorful shawl that holds its own is seen in Snow Queen, a large full-length seated portrait by India Cruse-Griffin.  The cubist mixed media work of an ambitious scale won an award for the artist as a First-Time Exhibitor. The eyes of the viewer alternate among the face, robe and hands of the queen amid a surreal foreground of draping blankets and background of ice and bare trees.

Held, Stephanie Spay, 101st Hoosier Salon

Stephanie Spay's Held, is another portrait of a sitter with a cup of tea. However, in this picture the beverage cup, the entire scene, is from a perspective of directly above. The circular tea is at the epicenter of the oil painting, and is surrounded by the sipping subject, who, due to the strange viewpoint, is reduced to an abstraction of muted and harmonious colors of clothing, hair, flesh and carpet, all dappled variously in light from a window out of frame.

1st Place Figure was Kyle Ragsdale's The Kids Are Alright. The multi-figurative composition plays out in two rooms of a house party. The front room is a spectacle of black light neon '80s, in flaming  pink and purple. A couple of musicians play violin and guitar for a dog who sits like an Egyptian statue and a young man standing like a caryatid, melding into the wall.  Beyond the lava light of the front room, the real action takes place in the harsh yellow light of a back room, where couples form and dance and chat, oblivious to the druggy scene out front. 

The Kids Are Alright, Kyle Ragsdale, 101st Hoosier Salon

Contemporary Abstract Expressionism.   

Many of  the abstract works, including the big winner, are in the style of contemporary abstract expressionism that prefers decorative colors and carefully balanced compositions. Whereas the originators of the genre, created often unbalanced, and at times unhinged works, arguable ugly and anti-decorative to the eyes of their times, (think of Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning), the modern ab ex artists in this show have settled on large, colorful and pleasingly predictable living room pieces that would seem well suited for display amid Ikea sofas and chairs.

Winning 3rd Place Abstraction was an oil painting, Willy-Nilly, by April Willy. The work presents an abstracted clump of flowers whose globular, candy-colored petals rise from a bit a green leaves, again globular, and a few gracefully arcing brown stems. Floating flowers protrude in a raised relief of cut circles of painted canvas adhered to the face of the picture. Other fuzzier more distant blooms fade into a background, muted and dissolving but still colorful.   

Trying to Get All My Ducks in a Row, Brenda Stichter, 101st Hoosier Salon

The 1st Place winner, Trying to Get All My Ducks in a Row by Brenda Stichter, is an acrylic that pays homage to Hans Hoffman's squares by marching bright pink 'ducks' (here an artist used globules again) from top left, across the center and to the right right bottom of the picture. The effect is something not altogether pleasing or unpleasing, but something in between.

2nd Place in the category went to the fiber art piece Someplace Else I'd Rather Be, by Carrie L. Wright. Whether composed of dyed or found fabric, or a combination of both, the result is an exuberant overload of bright colors in a complex, almost paisley, design. It may vaguely represent a landscape viewed through an exploding or enlightened vision, as there seems a sky-like area at top, with a more blue and white openness as opposed to cramped cacophony of clashing color below.

Altogether different, and perhaps not an abstract at all, but rather a strange still life, is Cindy Wingo's Life's Balance VIII.  It would be no surprise to see this large acrylic picture in a flip house staging above a millennial-gray couch, but it's more than a mere bit of monochrome décor. The artist won a prize with a picture from the same series in last year's 100th Hoosier Salon. And she was exploring a similar color vein in her show Black and White at the Greater Lafayette Museum of Art of a couple years back. Hers is a careful study of hue and tone, surface, subject and composition, even if the painting is just the captured likeness of a pocketful of stones.

A piece in the style of the late abstract movement, Op Art or neo geo, is John DeCosta's acrylic TRI-Plex. Three pyramidal squares seemed to pulsate in a glowing, fluorescent, rectangular footprint amid a bed of magenta. The somewhat simple and minimal hard-edge design is softened by the wax and wane of the optical effects the artist has achieved through his painting of color diffused.     

  

A Final Three.

A First-Time Exhibitor award was given to Arkady Roytman for the small oil portrait, Katie. The unpretentious work shows a young red-headed woman in a colorscape room to match of rose, salmon, and warm flesh-tone. The deft brushwork contributes to the casual and spontaneous feel of the picture which captures the alluring likeness of a meditative calm and trust.

View Out Back - Hammond, IN, Tony Bianco, 101st Hoosier Salon

A Juror's Special Award was given to Tony Bianco and his acrylic painting, View Out Back – Hammond, IN. Bianco's painting serves as a metaphor of why art will always exist. Why drawings and paintings will always be made. The artist's eyes notice things that demand acknowledgment and preservation. A preservation beyond personal memory or words, but something more concrete, tangible, and existential, a thing to be shared. Bianco's eyes saw a washroom symphony in yellow and white. An unlikely urban oasis. He saw patina instead of grime. A momentary vision, an epiphany, acknowledge by his eyes, preserved by his paint.    

And finally, near the door, aside the People's Choice fan favorite voting box, is a watercolor by Alyssa Wolber, Onward.  It is the uncomplicated image of a child, hanging on to a challenge ladder monkey bars. The picture appears as a photograph or a magazine illustration as much as a fine art piece, as it is bereft of background detail or any painterly contrivance. But it is well and believably rendered. 

Onward, Alyssa Wolber, 101st Hoosier Salon

The child becomes an 'everykid,' as his face is obscured almost entirely by his arm hanging on the bar above.

Hang on kid, you can do it. And if you are not a People's Choice, you were almost there.

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025 

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.