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.

Indiana's Richard Brown Black – Painting by an Artist as a Young Man

Street Scene, Algiers by Richard Brown Black

Orientalism in Indiana.

A painting of glowing mastery and golden beauty hangs in the genealogy room of the Greenfield Public Library. It is an street scene of North Africa, in a late orientalist style that borders on modernism. The vaguely abstract manner of its rendering is evocative of the mystery of its subject matter of faraway daily life. The picture appears created with a level of skill seen by masters of the French genre, Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Leon Gerome. It was a genre that coincided with the more well-known romantic movement that supplanted the neoclassical period dominated by Jacques-Louis David and Jean August Dominique Ingres.

European interest in the 'Orient,' as Egypt and Northern Africa were called at the time, was inspired and began shortly after Napoleon's Egyptian escapades prior to his time as emperor. It would continue throughout the 19th Century.

All that being said, it seems strange to see such an exotic piece hanging outside a museum in a library in the middle of Indiana. Even if it shares space with artworks of or by such local luminaries as painter Will Vawter and poet James Whitcomb Riley.

The artwork hangs in a prominent spot of the history room, treasured under glass, within a sturdy golden frame with an engraved plate reading Street Scene, Algiers,  Richard Brown Black, 1988 – 1915.

Who Was Richard Brown Black?

The first mention of Greenfield, Indiana native Richard Brown Black in Indiana newspapers is the June 24, 1909, Cambridge City Tribune.  His story starts with the news as follows,

“Richard Black, of Greenfield, a talented and successful young artist, who has spent several years abroad in the study of his profession, is here the guest of his relatives, Mr. and Mrs. M. L. Bowmaster.”

The next year, the July 3, 1910, Muncie Star reports, amid a column containing various horrific tragedies reported around the state, a bit of good news from Greenfield,

“Richard Black, whose home is in this city, and who is studying art in Paris, has had the sketch, An Old Fashioned Fireplace accepted for a place in the Paris salon.” 

A few years later, in an article titled 'Recognition as Painter' in the April 1, 1914, Indianapolis News, Black's burgeoning art career is reported,

“Richard Black...who for some years has been an art student in Paris, is receiving substantial recognition as a painter.  He has just sold two canvases exhibited in this year's orientalist salon, one to the French government and one to Georges Leggeus, the well-known French art connoisseur...Mr. Black is only twenty-five years old, and his success is regarded as remarkable. Until recently he had given most of his time and talent to etching.”

His participation in the prestigious annual French exhibition is reported in the April 12, 1914, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette,

“Paris, April 11. – Richard Black, of Indiana, is among the American artists, who have exhibits in the national salon of fine arts, which opens (in Paris, April 12, 1914).”

A year later, Black exhibited in the 8th Annual Indiana Artists show at the Herron Art Institute. His work was reviewed by the art writer, Rena Tucker Kohlmann, in The Indianapolis News,  March 13, 1915,

“Among the younger artists in the state, the work of Richard Black, of Greenfield, is noticeably good. His Street in Algiers is excellent, and his etchings, Grain Market, Lousse and In the Souks – Tunis are interesting notes...”

The Pride of Greenfield.

A palpable city pride for the accomplishment of the young artist is observed in the reporting of the Herron exhibition by the Greenfield Republican, April 1, 1915,

“Those of our citizens who have visited the exhibition of the works of Indiana artists at the Herron Art Institute, at Indianapolis, have been especially interested in the three pictures by Richard Black, of this city. Mr. Black, who has lived abroad many years, is at present ill at his home on Douglas street.

Two of the pictures are etchings of unusual merit, and were in the 1914 salon des Beaux Arts of Paris. The one oil painting is of a distinctive character – a harmonious representation of a street scene in Algiers. This painting was first exhibited in the 1913 salon in Paris and in 1914 it was selected by the Paris jury of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to represent the Paris group of American painters, and was well hung in the Pennsylvania exhibit.

Mr. Black's pictures show that he is a thoroughly equipped artist. In his works, we see picturesque composition, good drawing, exquisite harmony of low-keyed color, and fine technique. Those who have been fortunate enough to see Mr. Black's pictures know how justly proud Greenfield will be of her talented young artist.”

Sadly, within days, and during the run of the exhibition, Richard Brown Black would pass away at his family home in Greenfield, as reported in the April 5, 1915, Greenfield Republican,

“Richard Black, age 26 years, died at 4 o'clock Wednesday morning at the Black home on North Spring street...of tuberculosis, following a long illness. The deceased was born in Greenfield, June 3, 1889, the son of Richard A. and Ione Black. His father, who was a prominent attorney, died in 1900, and a few years later the widow and her children went to Europe where the children were educated.  They lived abroad about twelve years. 

For the past five years Richard A.(sic) Black was a student of art...He spent two years in Africa and painted many views of northern Africa. 

He returned to his home in this city last summer and had been sick since that time. While there had been but little if any hope for his recovery, still his death at this time was unexpected, as he had seemed to be better, especially on Tuesday, and his brother, Thomas, who had been here several days, left at 7 o'clock Tuesday evening for Columbia University, where he is a student. The deceased leaves the mother, one brother, Thomas, and two sisters, Nelle(sic?) Black...and Mrs. Kelsey Flower...”   

The death was also reported April 17, 1915,  by The Indianapolis News,

“Greenfield, Ind., April 7. – Richard B. Black, age twenty-seven, an artist of note, died today at the home of his mother, Mrs. Ione Black, in this city.

Two of his pictures were sold to the French government a year ago, and three are now on exhibition at the Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis...

Mr. Black was in northern Africa two years, and painted many scenes there.

Mr. Black was educated in Germany and Paris, where he spent twelve years. He returned to this city last summer, afflicted with tuberculosis. He was the son of Richard A. Black and was unmarried...”

The Algiers painting's eventual location in the library is explained in a September 2, 1915 article in the Greenfield Republican, 

“An oil painting, the work of the late Richard Brown Black, has been hung in the public library. Mr. Black was born in Greenfield, but spent most of his life in study abroad. He was an artist of rare ability, and had he lived he would have achieved a high place among American artists. His death, which occurred last spring, is greatly to be lamented. The picture which hangs in the library is a street scene in Algiers....

Mr. Black gave the picture to Miss Lizzie Harris, of this city. Because of his esteem for his native city and a desire that his work may be seen and appreciated by the people, Miss Harris has hung it in the library as a memorial to him.”

Although it is not clear from the newspaper articles, one stating an age of 26 years and one 27. If Mr. Black had been born in June 1889 and died in April 1915, he would have been 25.

Posthumous Honor and Family Tragedy.

Ione Brown Black of Greenfield, Indiana,
mother of Richard Brown Black 

Almost a decade later, on August 10, 1922, the Greenfield Republican reported an update regarding the the work of the fallen artist,

“Word has been received here from Mrs. Ione Black, who has made her home for several years in the country around the Mediterranean Sea, that a painting by her son, the late Richard Black, has been given recognition by the French government and is to hang in one of the government buildings until twenty years from the date of Mr. Black's death, when it is to be transferred to the chambers of the Louvre, where it will hang among the works of the greatest artists of Europe and of the world...

One of his best paintings, a North African landscape subject, and very similar to the one honored by the French government, hangs in the local public library, a gift from the family...(the Greenfield library painting) has opportunity to become one of the most highly regarded and prized possessions of the city.”   

In a horrifying turn of events, within a few years, Richard Black's sister Nellie, along with her two young children, would be murdered by her husband, the children's father, in New Orleans. Reported in the May 16, 1925, Indianapolis News, 

“Nellie Black Peckham, who with her two small children, was killed in New Orleans Friday by Professor George W. Peckham, her husband, was the daughter of Alexander and Ione Black of this city. Mr. Black, for many years a prominent attorney of Hancock county, was killed twenty years ago in Indianapolis when he struck a telephone pole while stepping from a moving interurban car.

Mrs. (Black) Peckham, her two children and (Mr.) Peckham were found at the Peckham home in New Orleans, dead of bullet wounds. The coroner decided it was a triple murder and a suicide case. Peckham is said to have been deranged.”

This horrific postscript serves to illustrate the level of tragedy the Black family had suffered for a period of years. But also, adds mystery to the whereabouts of certain artworks by Richard Brown Black.  The Greenfield Daily Reporter ran a similar article, also on May 16, 1925, about the New Orleans killings, and ended with this note,

“While last in Greenfield Mrs. Peckham removed to her home in the South some of the pictures by her brother.”

Additional Biographical Details.

On the occasion of his posthumous participation in a three person art exhibit in 1928 in Richmond, Indiana, additional biographic details of Richard Brown Black are learned. The  March 3, 1928, Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram reported,

“An exhibition of oil paintings, watercolors and etchings, the works of Miss Olive Rush of Santa Fe, N. Mex., R.B. Gruelle, one of Indiana's early Hoosier Group, and Richard Brown Black, a young artist who painted during the early part  of the 20th century, will be open to the public ...in the art galleries of Morton high school...

Although just a very young painter when he died, Richard Brown Black, whose collection of oil paintings, etchings and water colors, mostly of foreign subjects, are a part the exhibition...

His oils show his profound feeling for exquisite color harmony. His choice of subject is varied and usually interesting. A delightful crispness prevails in his water colors, many of them preliminary sketches for his oil paintings.

Black was born in Greenfield, Ind. On June 3, 1888. All his art education was obtained in France. In 1903, at the age of 15 he entered the Beaux Arts of Avignon, and remained there for two years. The following year, 1905-1906, he traveled through Spain, Northern Africa and Italy. It was in Rome, in 1906, that he learned to etch. During the year 1906-1907, he was a pupil of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Julien in Paris. After a stay of two years in the United States, he returned to Paris and was admitted at the (Fernand) Cormon studio in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts (1909).

Until that time, he had worked only in drawing (charcoal, pencil, pen and ink), water color and etching; it was Cormon who insisted that he had the eye and the manner of an oil painter. The great French master was proud of his 'find,' for he soon considered his American pupil as one, if not the most, promising in his studio. 

After 1911, his health obliged him to live most of the time in Southern France and Northern Africa, where the majority of his work was done. 

Each time he returned to Paris, he showed all the work he done  to Cormon, and the master invariably had nothing but praise. On one occasion, he paid the American artist a compliment that probably was unique to the painter's career. 

'Black,' he said, 'your conception of painting is altogether different from mine, but if I were young, I don't know  but what I'd choose yours.'”  

 A week later on March 10, the same newspaper provided a more detailed review of the show,

“Along the east wall and on panels on the north and south walls are hung the 43 works of art by Richard Black, which is only a small number compared to the many pieces of work he produced before reaching the age of 25 years. One marvels at the quality of painting beautiful warm color harmonies and fine drawing displayed by so young an artist. It is a manifestation of his genius and of what he probably would have achieved had he lived longer.

Upon showing his likeness and aptness in making pictures while a very young boy, Mr. Black's mother became thoroughly interested and consequently, gave him all opportunities and advantages of the best art schools and masters of painting in France. He was a consistent and rapid worker, always well liked by his associates and made great progress in his art expression.

Practically all the paintings and etchings of R. B. Black are in New York, and with two exceptions, the present exhibit contains only work that was left in his Greenfield studio...(the exceptions) The Port of Algiers...was in the Salon des Orientalistes of 1914. Later it was informally accepted by the late Leonce Benedite, curator of the Luxembourgh museum, to be added to the American School in the gallery.  His Street in Algiers...was in the Paris Salon of 1913...”   

A complete and invaluably list of the Richard Black works in the exhibition is included in the March 24, 1928 coverage of the exhibit in The Indianapolis Star. Of particular note are the oil paintings, reported in the art column as follows; Portrait, Gaby, Louise, Vaison - France, Fruit Merchant – Tunis, Constantine, Port of Algiers and Street in Algiers (the Greenfield library painting).

Although his life was cut short by illness and death, the sublime vision of Richard Brown Black lives on, in a painting of stunning beauty in central Indiana. He, and his painting, the color of perpetual sun.

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.

The Epic Dramas of Artist Elmer Taflinger – Act Six

The Ruins, Holliday Park, Indianapolis, designed by Elmer Taflinger
photo by the author, 2025

 

Puff Breathing Dragons.

For many years, and particularly during the 1960s, Elmer Taflinger was ever-present in a daily human interest Indianapolis Star column penned by Lowell Nussbaum. Nussbaum had a varied career before seeking out work as a journalist, which he pursued in Chicago, Indianapolis, Toledo then back for good in Indianapolis. The homespun column he would be known for, The Things I Hear!, ran in The Star from 1945 through 1971.

It is almost as if there was a direct telephone connection between between Nussbaum and Taflinger during those years. A red phone, hot-line that either man could call the other, when caught in a bind.  Taflinger, when he needed a little shot of dopamine, or Nussbaum, when he was running a little low on material. 

The Taflinger mentions in The Things I Hear! could be categorized as one of several common types;  know-it-all, gadfly, comic or eccentric.

For example, in the comic vein, in a November 1959 column, Nussbaum relays the following for his daily readers,

“Elmer Taflinger tells of the woman who wished a portrait of herself to give her husband. She said she would pay a handsome fee 'if you'll make me look 10 years younger.'

'Tell you what I'll do,' replied the artist, 'I'll paint you as you are today and you can give it to your husband 10 years from now.' ”

And on June 14, 1960, Nussbaum's column contained,

“Everything happened to Artist Elmer Taflinger while he was painting a picture of the Meridian Street Methodist Church last week.

During the painting, he nearly was run over by a woman riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. Then the frame slipped from the easel while Taflinger was leaning over. The heavy frame bopped him in the head, cutting a gash. 

To cap the climax, he learned later he had painted the wrong church.”

Taflinger as an expert on all things is demonstrated on August 8, 1962, when the artist corrects the columnist, as Nussbaum writes,

“Elmer Taflinger straightens out Friday's off-the-cuff quotation, 'All is not gold that glitters.'

The last word is 'glisters', not glitters, Elmer reminds. 'It's from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Act II.'

Can I help it if Shakespeare didn't know how to spell glisten?”

And again in the column, March 1, 1966, when Nussbaum writes,

“An American touring Europe can 'read' the road signs without difficulty, even though he doesn't speak the language. But a foreigner trying to drive here is in for trouble.

Elmer Taflinger, Indianapolis artist, feels European signs are a lot safer than ours because they wordless, and the driver can tell their message at a glance...

How much simpler that is than our multiplicity of verbose signs which take our attention from driving while we read them.”

Taflinger as Lowell-appointed art expert can be seen in the January 16, 1969 column where Nussbaum bumbles his facts,

“Elmer Taflinger, the Indianapolis artist, blew his beret when he heard that Jan van der Marck, Chicago artist, whose 'thing' is wrapping entire buildings in canvas or paper, is to judge the Indiana Artists Exhibit in March.

Elmer's comment: 'Why don't they wrap him in canvas, head and all, and let him choose the winning painting by the touch system?' ”

Nussbaum had to correct himself in a later column, noting that van der Marck was actually director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and it was that museum building that then unknown artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, would wrap in 1969, in what become an international art world sensation.

Despite his glib dismissal of Christo, Jeanne-Claude and van der Marck, and what would be seen by history as their monumental achievement in Chicago, Taflinger, seemingly unfettered by humility or self-awareness, would  continue to plod on and perform the role of a know-it-all and art sage in Indianapolis. It would be his most common persona to appear in the press in his latter days as grand man of local arts.

In June of 1959, he would comment on the semi-circular design of alleyway pavement near the downtown Bankers Trust Building as “not limited to Germans,” but  Parisian as well. He provided pictorial proof and elucidated further regarding why the stones are laid in curves, “(cobblestones are) made by hand of very hard stone, (they) don't break exactly square...one side usually being wider than the other. And they just naturally work out better in a curves line.”

In an equally esoteric proclamation contained in a Nussbaum column in January of 1961, Taflinger, on the occasion of the demolition of the elaborate Marion County Courthouse which had stood since 1876, and was replaced by today's City County Building, lectured on the original building materials of the razed structure. The 'marble' walls of the structure were actually Keene's cement, a white gypsum powder, plaster-like material invented in England around 1840. And the stone pillars on the building's exterior were not granite, but rather something called Scotch marble, whatever that was.

In September 1962, Taflinger's opinion about the then current renovation to the Indianapolis Central Library was quoted. Nussbaum memorializes Taflinger's eye-in-the-sky remark to a workman on the scene, “This is one of most beautiful buildings in town, and it's a shame to spoil its appearance.” The workman's down-to-earth reply, “I don't know about that, Mister. But it has more waste space in it than any building in town.”

Even up to the last year of his life, Taflinger would be sharing an obtuse and mocking observation about a new public sculpture in town, Untitled (L's).  In Marion Garmel's 'Brush Strokes' column in the September 17, 1980, Indianapolis News, she reports what may be Taflinger's final words on art,

“Elmer Taflinger, the city's self-appointed guardian of artistic standards, says he has come up with the hidden secret in the sculpture designed by David von Schlegell, for the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis library.

The work, which went up last week, involves three L-shaped stainless steel pieces placed in a triangular pattern on the library plaza. It is said to be based on the 3-4-5 triangle of Pythagoras with the ratio in the distance from the base of one vertical shaft to the next – in this case 138 feet by 184 feet by 230 feet...

'So what you do,' says Taflinger, 'is divide each figure by 2. Then divide the smallest figure by 3, the next smallest by 4 and the largest by 5. What do you get? 23. And that's the meaning of it. When the sculptor gets his check, he'll be saying 23-skidoo.' ”

 

Curtain Call.

Threading through Taflinger's newspaper mentions, despite his showboat tenancies and his obvious affinity for press coverage, is his expertise in the classics, his drive toward preservation, and his Quixotic impossible dreams. 

Those elemental forces would combine and give meaning to the last act of his life, his final artistic statement, and the one that still endures at Holliday Park. 

It would begin in 1958, when Western Electric purchased the St. Paul Building in New York City's financial district as the location for their future modern office headquarters. The St. Paul was historical in several regards, primarily in that it was one of the very first skyscrapers in the city, and also that its facade contained sculptural components by renowned architectural artist, Karl T. Bitter. A preservation committee was established to place the important components of the building's artistry to further use at some other site, putting out a call for proposals. 

And so it was that Elmer Taflinger and Indianapolis architect David V. Burns would design a grotto and reflecting pond at Holliday Park in the city's northwest-side as a submission to the committee. 

According to the March 6, 1959 Indianapolis Star, the  Taflinger/Burns design won out over those by several different cities and universities, and over Idlewild Airport and the United Nations. 

Burns was to leave the project shortly thereafter, and it would be up to Taflinger to fight for money, implement the installation, and ultimately conclude the project, although to his mind, in an abbreviated, unfinished state some fifteen years later.

Perhaps Taflinger was first attracted to the project to preserve the important architectural elements contained in the facade of the St. Paul Building because of the sculpted figures. Arguably, the spectacular three colossi by renowned  artist Karl Bitter, deserved better then the wrecking ball. The three stone behemoths had held up the world on their shoulders for nearly sixty years, after all.

Or maybe because these same sculptural elements portrayed a trilogy of men, mankind as a Vitruvian multiplicity, much like Taflinger had painted as a centerpiece, the Leonardo da Vinci three-faced head, in his Apotheosis of Science mural years before.

A more mysterious fate may have been playing its hand, though, in attracting Taflinger to the project. 

The St. Paul Building, one of New York City's first skyscrapers, was built in 1898. It towered to a height of 22 stories, when nothing else did. As such, it was one of the nation's first buildings to, like Icarus, reach for the sun. That foolish ambition of architect, artist and dreamer alike. 

The building was named for its location near St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. Granted, not the mid-town Taflinger knew in his many years in the city with Belasco and his theater, but on Broadway, nonetheless. 

Further, the exact spot of the building was the former location of a tourist trap called Barnum's American Museum, and then, when the Barnum building burned down, the New York Herald newspaper. Much as the St. Paul Building had a foundation built upon prior hucksterism and newsprint, Taflinger himself had created a career hobbled atop a similar footing. 

A March 6, 1959, Indianapolis Star article detailed the progress of the early days of the project,

“A Brooklyn stone firm is readying three 10-ton statues by the late world-famed architect Karl Bitter for their journey by truck to Indianapolis, where they will be installed in splendor at Holliday Park...Made of Indiana limestone, they are valued at more than $150,000...The statues represent workman of the world's three major races.

(Elmer) Taflinger will supervise the project to its completion...”

Just a few months later, the same paper reported a possible delay in the project in their July 24 edition,

“Plans for construction of a reflective pool in Holliday Park to house three famous statues have been delayed because of the artist's insistence that the pool must contain a giant spray splashing a 40-minute message in Morse code.  

Elmer E. Taflinger, world-famed Indianapolis artist, told the park board the 100-foot spray in Morse code is a 'definite must' if the proper setting is to be provided for the 51-year-old figures.

'We can cut down every place else, but if we are to have something distinctive – something different from anything else in the world – we must have these two jet sprays,' Taflinger said.”

The bizarre demand seems a strange sort of personal homage, to Taflinger's boyhood and lifelong love of electronics, as opposed to a universal or aesthetic statement in full service of the project. But who's to know. Most novel thoughts sound crazy at first. 

Whatever Taflinger's rationale, it all came down to money. Taflinger's construction proposal was at $180,000 and the city's budget was no more than $100,000.

Perhaps it was a tempest in a teapot devised by Taflinger to stir up controversy and public interest. Whether or not contrived, the story was carried by the wire service UPI and a blurb went out across the country and was widely reported. The July 25, 1959, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph is one such example with a small, below the fold, front-page piece as follows,

“Indianapolis, Ind. – City officials today studied a suggestion by artist Elmer Taflinger that the city build a park fountain of 100-foot high columns of water spelling out 'the prayer of the world' in Morse code.”

Lost in the story were the Bitter sculptures, but covered was Taflinger's name and his hair-brained sounding scheme.

A year or so later, the project was still delayed according to the June 12, 1960, Indianapolis Star,

“Three famous statues which have sat in crates at Holliday Park for 14 months probably will stay that way for quite a while... 

...the statues have remained in their crates while a slow-motion debate went on about how elaborate the setting should be. (Artist, designer, installer) Taflinger wanted 'the works,' including colored lights and a fountain that would squirt out the letter 'V' in Morse code.”

The eventual progress of the project was documented in a photograph in the August 17, 1961 Indianapolis News which showed the first statue being lowered into place on the constructed base work, largely complete.

Just two years later, the project would be subject of stark criticism in The Star, when they would report on September 29, 1963, 

“What was once planned as a cultural showplace for Indianapolis, a grotto in Holliday Park for the famous Karl Bitter statues, now is a neglected, barren and meaningless exhibit, serving primarily as a potential death trap for youngsters.”

The photo that accompanied the article contained the warning, “Loose Stones Pose Danger To Adventuresome Children.”  The article further reports that “Records show that at least two legal suits are pending against the city because youngsters  have fallen from the dangerous memorial.”

By 1973, final funding was being arranged for a scaled-back fountain in the hopes of a belated dedication of the site soon to follow.

Finally, in November 1974, with only landscaping yet to be completed, Elmer Taflinger, along with Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar, and U.S Representative William Hudnut participated in a tree-planting ceremony at The Ruins at Holliday Park. The three trees planted possessed a symbolic and esoteric meaning for Taflinger, which he tried to explain, but sort of failed, in the accompanying Indianapolis Star article on November 4, 1974. 

Deus Ex Machina.

Elmer Taflinger turned from art to words his last decade or so. His late life's work, The Ruins, were nearly complete by the 1970s, and since he was in his eighties, chances were, so was his life. A last straw came along that broke something in him that explained his change in course. Leave it to Lowell Nussbaum to score the scoop, when he wrote in his January 23, 1969, The Things I Hear! column,

“Something which Elmer Taflinger, prominent artist and art instructor, said the other day puzzled me...

'Elmer,' I said, 'what did you mean when you said to refer to you as a writer rather than an artist?'

'It's like this,' he explained. 'In a long career as an artist, I have won some prizes, but never a top prize. The nearest I ever came was in Chicago. The judges selected my painting – a nude – as best but the show manager rejected the award because he didn't think he could get a picture of a nude reproduced in a newspaper. So they gave me a special award and hung my picture behind a potted palm.'

And then Elmer got down to the point of his story:

'Last summer, my sister (retired Manual High School history teacher, Mrs. Robt. L Black), entered one of her paintings in the State Fair art show. She won the sweepstakes award in the amateur division.

They gave her a silver tray and a rosette almost as large as the picture. That did it. I decided right then to forget art and stick to writing my autobiography.'

The postscript to his lament:

'And I framed the picture for her.' ”  

So words it was, from there on out.

In his interviews and the articles written about him, even those quoting him directly, words were rarely adequate to express the depth of Taflinger's mind, the breadth of his insight. 

Elmer Taflinger was to struggle in the last years of his life to complete his memoir, a gargantuan 1600 page manuscript called Revolting Hoosier. Sadly, he was apparently unable to rein in and organize his overflowing thoughts and ideas during his lifetime, and the manuscript remains unpublished.

Perhaps his last great regret was not finishing the book. Or maybe, as he was to suggest in several late interviews, that the city did not fund The Ruins to the perfection in his mind's eye. The bizarre perfection on the outer limits of his hazy vision for a prayer in stone, trees and water, for the people of the world, broadcast in perpetuity from our Circle City crossroads, from Holliday Park on Earth, as it is in heaven. 

Epitaf.

In the August 30, 1970, Indianapolis Star interview by Lloyd B. Walton, the lifelong Taflinger mystery is described,

“Since boyhood Taflinger has pursued a will-o'-the-wisp idea – something he wanted but couldn't quite figure out. Something he needed, but couldn't define.” 

Taflinger alludes to the hidden secret of his life with scattered clues in his many newspaper articles over the many decades.

A love of three, his epitaph, yearning for the fourth. A trinity of ruined giants, that only you, a human soul, can perfect.

Taflinger was no lone wolf, nor was he a team player. It was always he and the other. 

The other of his model. Of his students. 

The other of a group of friends at the restaurant. The crowd at the fair. A mob lining the streets at a Christmas parade. 

The other of his public, his newspaper readers.  The reporters with their notepads and tape recorders, and the Morse code he played like a fiddle. 

Always he and his other.

Ever-changing, ever-complex – like abalone –possessing and reflecting an iridescent beauty from inside out.   

His Ruins  –  a graveyard – not of sorrow or regret, or even wary sadness.  But a park of wonder, and respite, of inspiration and admiration. For all men and women who carry the world on their shoulders and aspire for the sky. 

Amen.

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025

Dedicated to Edward John Diekhoff, Jr.  1938 - 2025

See Also:

Dawn Mitchell, Indy Star, How 'The Ruins' at Holliday Park took decades to complete

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