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

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.

Patrick the First, King of Mass Ave – Part Three

Gemini AI for illustrative purposes only

King for a Day.

Was it all just a dream, a long, long, time ago, along a skid row close at hand? Where a fair-haired young man approached a non-existent art world with little more than a business plan and a packed resume of experience, and a dream.  

This part of his story, told as a fable, although deserving a serious treatise. But art histories usually yellow as clippings in the dusty scrapbooks of time.  Whereas, stories, who knows,  might live and breath the bad and good of their hero's journey, where the quest is the destination, because the present is not a place, it's the kingdom of one's life. So head on pillow, read to me, and show me the pictures...

That...once upon a realm, Patrick King Contemporary Art was heating up, lighting a fuse that would soon explode into a full-fledged scene of merry pranksters and banksters, artists and critics. An emerald-city of a place to draw archetypal characters to its glow –  throne usurpers and pretenders, courtiers and the great unwashed...

To tell it another way...

If a painting was like a football, if only for a little while, that magic movement converging on Massachusetts Avenue was like a packed and crowded Hoosier Dome might be, about a year later, down the road near Union Station. 

A cavernous edifice, big as the Indiana sky, towering above all the crumbling asphalt and the corn. Filled with puffy, cloud-like thoughts of  buzz, and excitement and dreams, all along its small town, yellow road. And looking out, a hazy phantasmagoria, just passed the curve of the visible horizon...

The shade of a flat hand pressed to the forehead as a visor, not trembling, but barely unsteady, trying so hard in the bright sun  just to see. 

Down the way...yes...it's something...yes something is there...an art scene, maybe it is...like a tournament, in that place way yonder on, or way back when...with jousts and banners, fanfare and fancy clothes. 

But dropping the hand, and looking down at the ground beneath the feet. The art before art scene was a ever-changing shadow on the move.  Just a year or so until the start of the ball.  And when it starts, the timer's on. 

And then they would come for the king, like the boilermaker for the leprechaun. At the thundering Dome, with the first whistle, they would come. Some for the love of the game, some for the party, all for the wave. 

And just as Mass Ave, as the colorful mirage was beginning to be called, as the crest was breaking over  cracked sidewalks littered with booze bottles and smelling of, well, let just say the letter 'P'...

Just as as the crest poked above the sea-level of the local topography – the flat-line of the city's art trajectory of late – its gentle first spurtle offered hope. For a rising tide, even if tiny, lifts hope. 

But what kind of rising hope was this Pluto water to become – a tsunami, or just the wind-driven lapping of wavelets upon a small pond?  

And in what state, this H2O? Be it frozen, or an in-between flowing or a gas?  Time would tell.  

Its clock ticking toward midnight with every footstep and every heartbeat. With every bravo, and ring of the register, the echo of something more hollow, and grave. 

Until the next rainbow ends in the moon's caress, the tide's rising and falling assured to repeat in a cycle even older than oceans, but younger than the night. 

But for the moment of King's halcyon days, his remaining weeks and months as the sole ruler of Mass Ave, he kept floating his boat on whatever the water. 

Serene and majestic, Patrick, on his royal barque...  

Big Bang or Steady State?

Much as Patrick King's first year of shows seemed to be pleasing the local art writers, there were a couple of group shows that were shown by institutions that critics found disappointing. One was a first-ever show and the other was the penultimate of a long-standing and storied local biennial. The reviews were just a day apart, hours even, as one appeared in the evening Indianapolis News and the other in the next morning's Star.

The First Juried Exhibition sponsored by the Indianapolis Academy of Fine Arts was the source of Marion Garmel's vague disapproval.  She reviews the show in her June 25, 1983 News column, writing,

“It's a small show, ultimately disappointing, but it says a lot about the state of the current Indianapolis art scene and contemporary Indiana artists.”

Garmel goes on to describe the art and artists in the show, but is sketchy, at best, in describing the roots of what comes across as a very mild ire. She does say that many of the artists and artworks are of the orbit of Herron Art School. As such, works are repeated or similar to those already seen in student and faculty shows. Connecting styles of professors to students are noted, and obvious at times. Other than that, she does not specify her disappointment. 

Steve Mannheimer, in his criticism of the 69th Indiana Artists exhibit at Indianapolis Museum of Art, in the next day's Star, displayed the trickster in him.  The trickster, as agent of change, as soothsayer, when he observes and he prods. He begins his review with a shrug and sigh,

“There has got to be a better way. At this rate we're never going to figure out whether Indiana artists can really cut the mustard or will forever play catch-up ball with the rest of the country.”

He quotes the museum's director, Robert A. Yassin, in the exhibition's press release that touts work in the show as competitive with art in Chicago and New York galleries. Mannheimer's reaction after seeing the show was succinct,

“Hoosier kidding who?”

For Mannheimer, the show was an amalgam of good, and not so much. The good being, by and large, the award winners in the show. Explaining his reaction more thoroughly,

“What we get is something for everybody. What we don't get is any sense of that 'strong Indiana tradition,' unless said tradition consists  simply of being from Indiana.

The vast majority of the work simply does not live up to such praise...

The first two rooms of the south gallery are littered with lackluster paintings, unexceptional in either concept or execution. What competence does emerge is completely undercut by adjacent amateurism...”

But he also notes that, generally speaking, the prize winners are worthy, technically competent and visually interesting. So he doesn't just complain. And he offers alternatives to the exhibit's “scatter gun attack.” As ways to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, he suggests,

“...take the prize winners, all 20 of them, and invite them to fill the third floor (of IMA) with five or six of their best pieces. Such an exhibit would represent the state of the art of the state more succinctly and, more importantly, with greater individual depth....

But if the invitational approach sounds too limiting, another alternative might be to offer winners small, one-person shows throughout the year. The IMA contains several spaces ideal for a small show.

 ...yet another alternative...could be...theme shows. Would not a more discussable, and hence a more useful exhibit be achieved by, let's say, a survey of the best realistic work in the state one year and only surrealism or abstraction the next?”

Mannheimer had had his say. To what effect was yet to be seen.  

As the art world in Indianapolis was to evolve it would display the tenancies of any old universe. Most simply explained as competing and binary theories; Big Bang or Steady State?

Big Bang is easy enough to imagine, a scene that keeps growing and expanding; more art and more artists, more galleries, more patrons, more sales. 

Whereas Steady State is a closed system;  finite resources or energy, where the rise and fall of things overlap and overlap, until the stasis of an ever-promised equilibrium is once again perceived. That is to say, in such a system, the rise of art on Massachusetts Avenue would foretell a fall elsewhere, such as the many decade's old Indiana Artists show. 

Recall that Indianapolis swapped out the old County Courthouse for the new City County Building. Indianapolis was missing something of a big bang there, either resources or imagination, parking or a jail. It either could not or would not not sustain both a beautiful heritage and the dazzling future, in that example.

Pax Ars Rex...

Outside of theories, and bedtime stories, the real world lurks. And Patrick King Contemporary Fine Art concluded its first full calendar year with Patricia Campbell's The Modular Form in October 1983 and then Shadow, Spaces and the Real by Rick Paul in November.  

Marion Garmel reviewed Campbell's show in an October 21, 1983 Indianapolis News column,

 “(Patrick) King has carefully renovated his small gallery to best exhibit the hanging, flowing, curving works of fabric that Miss Campbell creates.”

And further, about the “architectural fabric constructions,”

 “They swing from ceiling to wall...(and) in alcoves lit from behind...

...Each is composed of identical 'modules,' usually pieces of cotton muslin stretched and shellacked till they crackle like paper, connected by wooden dowels and paper chord.”

And about the design and/or effect of the artworks,

“The pieces are obviously designed to fit into, yet soften the harshness of, contemporary architecture.

The regular repetition of modules is (quoting the artist) 'very geometric. It has a machine look. But the closer you get, you see it is handmade. You understand an artist made it, a machine didn't.' ” 

Barbara Stokely reviews Rick Paul's exhibition of six drawings and five wall constructions in her December 4, 1983, Indianapolis Star article.  Her comments about his drawings relate to his wall constructions as well,

“The imagery of these monochromatic illustrations on paper denotes mostly itself and rarely connotes other allusions.

...For Paul, the illusionistic conventions of painting and drawing become the subject...”

Stokely quotes the artist and his motives,

“I create illusion in dimension...but I don't want to build. In my drawings, I record sculptural ideas that can't be made. I have fantasies that can't be defined.”

She will also review Patrick King's following show, Sculpture Jam, in the February 4, 1984, Star,  

“While Sculpture Jam...may sound like an upbeat improvisation, the crowding together of all these works brings another meaning of 'jam' to mind.

Some of the pieces by the nine featured artists are fresh and new; more suffer from deja vu. King might have better served his artists by showing a little restraint and limiting the show to new work.

Several of the works by Skip Koebbeman, Valarie Eickmeier, Dale Traugott, Doug Calisch, Rick Paul and Gary Freeman have been seen in recent exhibitions at the Indianapolis Art League, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, or the Herron Gallery. IUPUI.”

She points out one egregious example, judging from her phraseology, 

“Overexposure for (Gary) Freeman's five maquettes for the American United Life sculpture competition has reached the point of diminishing returns... 

Freeman's Sally's Jams, a large, welded and bolted steel sculpture which dominates the center (placement in the show) is much more eloquent.” 

You get the sense from the newspaper coverage that Patrick King really hits the mark with his next show, Paintings by Joni Heide and Dennison Griffith, in March. Both Marion Garmel, toward the shows opening, and Steve Mannheimer, near the closing, have good things to say. 

In the March 9, 1984 News, Garmel writes,

“Pattern is the key to Joni Heidi's large paintings...Simplicity is the key to Dennison Griffith's. 

Yet the two, who each have maintained a sense of childish delight, work well together in the exhibit...”

About Heide's Hope to Tell You, she writes,

“...one of her liveliest works, (it) features a primitive four-legged dog with his flowered shadow on the right and a spangly costume, head area cut out for a real person to step behind, on the left. A small, enigmatic, figure of a woman seems to be sitting under a tree nearby, while dots and dashes, stripes and tumbling stick figures populate other areas.” 

 And about Ohio artist, Griffith, 

“His large paintings contain simple, large areas of vivid color heavily painted in acrylic, enamel and oil stick.

His largest and most serious painting provides a good example of how Griffith isolates portions of an image to emphasize the whole. It's called Beth – Pink on Gold, and is basically a nude.”

Garmel describes how the works interplay together in the show,

“Neither Griffith nor Miss Heide use three-dimensional perspective – their paintings are all on the surface. Yet the difference between them is readily apparent in two works hung side-by-side. Griffith's Deener is a bare table set with one glass, one knife and one napkin. Miss Heidi's version of the same scene, though untitled, is packed with cups, forks, dogs and a Matisse-like sense of gaiety.”

 Steve Mannheimer's review of the same show in the March 25 Star, is half part review, and half part sociology. About Heidi, he writes,

“Pieces like Hope to Tell You and (Untitled)...may seem too raucous or arbitrary at first. Their colors and pattern-filled composition come across like exploded plaid giftwrap on a Christmas morning aftermath.

Viewers will note that despite this...(they) are really warm, even quietly intimate in their intent. Perhaps this is due to her obvious winks, blinks and nods to children's and ethnographic art.”

About Mr. Griffith's painting he writes,  

“Feeshteek shows us a fish cut by the edge of the picture. It doesn't look like anything else.  Deener is simply a stylized table with a glass, knife and napkin. 

Only (his) Boosh – which, if his mock-accented titles run constant, must mean 'bush' – seems beyond literal interpretation. It's an odd painting, which is to say puzzling, which is to say sort of mysterious, which is to say there's something there worth looking at.”

But regarding Mannheimer's socio-anthropological angle, he concludes his review with a soliloquy about the plight of the starving artist versus the career of the comfy institutionalist, as pertaining generally to the uncertain economy and specifically to the two persons in the show,

“This (making art) is at best a tough, often painful business, fraught with disappointments, occasional disasters and always fickle fate. Not necessarily knowing where one's next bottle of beer is coming from can frazzle the most committed art-aholic.

It's best to appreciate those who manage whatever they can  in whatever their circumstances, and understand those who can't always manage as well or we might hope.”

Art is worth rooting for, and maybe supporting too, Mannheimer seems inspired by the exhibition to say.

Hot on the heels of the show, Patrick King's Passion Leads would quickly follow. And again both Marion Garmel in The News and Steve Mannheimer in The Star would provide thorough reviews.

In her April 20, Brush Strokes column, Garmel sets the scene,

“The paintings at Patrick King Contemporary Art literally scream off the walls: 'Me. Look at Me. This Is Me.”

Her review continues,

“This is Passion Leads, an exhibit of current Chicago painting by three artists...continuing through May 12 at the gallery...

In contrast to the impersonal images of the geometers and minimalists of the 1960s and '70s, Jim Brinsfield, Darinka Novitovic and Will Northerner want you to know these are their paintings reflecting their ideas, their insights, their emotions.

They trace their lineage to the first generation of truly American 20th century painters, the abstract expressionists of the 1940s and '50s, who also wanted to create a pictorial language that would express the physical and spiritual complexities of the modern world. As Brinsfield put it at the opening of the show,  'Being American, we have to be true to ourselves – and we have to be true to our ancestors.'

But unlike their ancestors, to whom the word 'abstract' was as important as the word 'expressionist,' these artists are working in a time when the figure is making a comeback. Their goal is to adopt the formal values of abstract expressionists to an art that incorporates the figure.”

This sounds like a serious undertaking and hearkens back to Patrick King's statement when still working at Editions Ltd., about his early days employed at the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City and even earlier exposure to galleries out East. He was attracted to serious, thought provoking artists, and the professional accommodation of the exhibition of their art.

Mannheimer would review the show as well in the April 29, Art World column,

“Passion Leads...sounds like the title of a Harlequin Romance. There's far more to it, but it's not an inappropriate analogy. Whatever their stylistic simplicities, these paintings, like those books, capture something basic of the American psyche.

As shows go, it's small – 11 decidedly neo-expressionist paintings by three Chicago artists...That's about all the gallery can accommodate. 

The show's impact, however, should be large.

...we have the first show of neo-expressionist painting in a local commercial gallery. Much more than the non-profit culture importers, commercial galleries take the temperature of a city's art scene. 

We're getting warmer. Whatever real art world sophistication is, we're getting closer to it.”

Both Garmel and Mannheimer refer to the exhibition catalog that accompanied the show, containing an essay written by art historian Joanna Muller Kuebler. The tagline to her overarching thesis is that the three Passion Leads artists make “art forms that transcend taste and style.”  Or perhaps to translate, this succinct Kuebler assertion, and Mannheimer's earlier analogy;  something like Beauty meets the Bold.

Mannheimer writes about the works,

“Jim Brinsfield...growls...power in Young Caesar and Loveland. The two paintings rely on energetic black-and-white brushstroke, some shades-of-subway spray paint and tumorous surfaces. Young Caesar is a scraggly, broken-limbed figure proclaiming a mixed stylistic heritage: Giacometti by way of graffiti.

Miss (Darinka) Novitovic's work, on the other hand, seems to have lept full-ardored from the brow of Venus. Her Language of Flowers (et al.)...are, in comparison to Brinsfield's, downright tender. 

In each piece, female figures are outlined in gentle brushstrokes against warmly colored backgrounds. They hug their knees, lift a hand to their face, whisper to each other, perhaps to themselves.

Northerner...has hold of a clutch of themes. His five paintings explore a spectrum of motifs and techniques that all, to some degree, bespeak religious metaphor.” 

Mannheimer describes Northerner's most compelling work, Solemn Maelstrom, Morass, Lianis Lift, 

“The simple, silver spray-painted figure emerging from a multi-colored maelstrom reminds one thematically of New Yorker Keith Haring's 'radiant child' emblem, a mythic creature of light dispelling modern gloom. Northerner's technique, however, is vastly more complex and engrossing.” 

Dividends of a Dream.

As can be seen from this survey of the critical coverage garnered by the exhibitions at Patrick King during his first year and a half of operation, he was riding high on street cred on the avenue. His gallery a force to be reckoned with by mid-1984. A pied piper or a kraken, sweet music or a roar? It's up to art's ear to decide. 

And as the beginning of the story has come to a close, it's time to thank Patrick King for being the first. 

And just think, if he had a nickel for every $100 being charged in rent along Massachusetts Avenue from 1982 up until today...

Well let's just say he could buy IMA or Newfields with that kind of money.  The building and the grounds, that is, not the art. The art inside, as Patrick knows, is priceless.

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

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