Terry Steadham – Art World Remembers

“Ever since I can remember I’ve had a fascination with a sense of a wondrous energy, a kind of magic, that pervaded all of nature ─ including myself.” 

Terry Steadham

January, 1991

Terry Steadham enjoyed a long and varied art career beginning with his education and graduation at John Herron School of Art from 1964-67. Steadham's first solo exhibit was displayed in Lieber Gallery in Indianapolis in 1968, and he was included in a group show of Indianapolis artists at the Indianapolis Museum of Art the same year.

Over the next decade, he exhibited often in Indianapolis and in an ever-widening circle throughout the Midwest and beyond, including shows in Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and New Orleans.

The New York art scene beckoned and Steadham lived and worked in Manhattan for several years in the later '70s through the early '80s. From his Bowery neighborhood studio, he produced works that were included in many exhibits including two person and other small group shows, as well as larger themed exhibits such as The Survival Show at Old P.S. 64 in 1981 and The U.F.O. Show at the Queens Museum of Art in 1982.

Steadham took on commercial work during this period, producing LP album and book covers, including perhaps most fittingly, the Arthur C, Clarke book The View from Serendip, 1977.

Steadham’s art path would branch out to Texas for a five year period beginning in 1984 and ending in 1988 with exhibitions at D. W. Gallery in Dallas. During this time, he continued to show work in New York, and notably, returned to exhibit in his hometown of Indianapolis for the first time in a decade in Holiday Show at Ruschman Art Gallery. 

(Ten years later in 1998, Steadham’s first exhibit at my Five Ten Gallery in the Faris Building in Indianapolis would be as part of an exhibit, also called ‘Holiday Show’ with fellow artists Dale Newkirk, Todd Lantz and Casey Roberts.)

Steadham would return to reside in Indianapolis in 1989. He would continue to exhibit with Ruschman Gallery for the next four years until 1992, and would eventually settle into a studio loft in the Faris Building artists enclave and a more elusive, bordering on reclusive, exhibition schedule between 1993-96.

It was at this time that I met Terry Steadham. First his art, and then his person.

In October 1996, I was renting a large, raw studio space in the southwest corner of the 5th floor of the Faris Building. I had been there for a couple of years by then. I always opened the doors to my space for the monthly or bi-monthly building open house events which drew large numbers of the Indianapolis art curious. After one such opening, Hot House Gallery’s Philip Campbell, who was my next door neighbor in the building, introduced me to graffiti artist and local impresario David Crowe. Campbell and Crowe had a proposition. They suggested I share with them in presenting  Crowe’s 3rd Annual Erotic Art Show in my space. I agreed, and I worked with them to ready the room and install the show. Crowe, and perhaps to some degree, Campbell, were responsible for choosing the artwork to be included.

Art almost seemed an afterthought to the spectacle of the party that included light S &M, piercings, tattoos and nudists, and several kegs of beer. But I cannot forget the wildly pornographic and brutal self-described ‘allism’ works of outsider artist, Jan Scott Boyer.  

The event and art as described would first appear as antithetical to the participation of Terry Steadham or the inclusion of his subtle, elegant, quantum mechanical art.  But he was represented by Tease, a small multimedia drawing on paper that depicted a sensual Rod of Asciepius form more erotic and elusive than anything else in the show.

 

The amazing jam-packed attendance of the show whetted my desire to turn my studio into a commercial gallery, and within a few weeks, I would get myself fired from my day job, and use my nest egg savings to open my first art space, Five Ten Gallery.

Five Ten began to generate some local buzz and Terry and I became personally acquainted shortly after the gallery opened in May of 1997. 

I would  eventually exhibit Terry’s work on a number of occasions. First in the pre-mentioned Holiday Show of 1998, then in the final exhibit in Five Ten Gallery before the Faris Building was sold and closed for good in April 1999; his solo show Coming Home. 

Summer Dream, mixed media on paper , 5" x 5"  from Holiday Show

Later, he was part of the group show Summer ’99 along with painters Jean Salzmann and William Burton Lawson at my latest gallery in a storefront location on Meridian Street directly across from Shapiro’s Delicatessen.

Negative, mixed media on paper  5" x 5"  from Summer '99

Terry and I had long, lazy afternoons discussing all things art world on the many slow traffic days that made up the bulk of my time running an art gallery. Indeed, it still stands as a record to this day. My longest sustained conversation in my life was the day we talked for eleven hours straight.

Some great sales did occur along the way. One patron had been watching a particular painting by Steadham back to the Ruschman Gallery days. It was one of the last of his long, panoramic paintings in a signature style that not yet sold. It was to be the most expensive artwork I sold.

We celebrated with a dinner at Bob Evans and a walk around the neighborhood aside the restaurant. The nighttime streets, the modest homes, the large lawns, mature trees and the sound of summer abuzz. We walked several long laps around the huge neighborhood over a period of hours as domestic lights and glowing televisions were extinguished one by one, beneath a crescent moon which Terry pointed out to me to take notice.

He told me about his marriages, the three of them, and his daughter, his New York friends, his commercial art jobs, and how it all fit together somehow; his life and his art.

I suppose I learned over time the degree to which Terry was fascinated by space, the planets, the sky.

When we had to move out of the Faris Building in a rush when it was sold, we went in together to rent a storage space and I helped him emptying out his studio, and he helped me emptying out my gallery.  It was then that I saw his childhood telescope, in a weathered and beat up box, but still colorful, still nifty as all 1950s toy boxes will always be.

And later, when Terry’s friend, and my fellow gallery owner, David Kadlec had some of us out to his farm for a spring party, Terry had a telescope set up. Myself, even at around  age 40,  I had never looked through a telescope before. Pointing toward the vastness of the rural night sky, Terry called me over to see. 

I bent down a bit to peer through the eyepiece, and there, somewhere way out there, was Saturn and Saturn’s rings, all alone yet together, in blackness, dancing for the rest of time.

Steve Mannheimer said enough when he said of Terry Steadham’s work ─ “thank you notes to the universe”.

Years later in the Spring of 2014, Jean Salzmann contacted me to tell me that Terry was in the hospital. He had suffered a stroke followed by further complications and was near death. I was numb. 

I had bumped into Terry in Frankfort, Indiana the previous September. Our paths crossed after several years for what would be the final time. He was at a ‘star party’ gathering of amateur astronomers for an overnight star gazing and camp out. I was at the same Boy Scout camp to play a solo round of disc golf. We had a nice visit under a bright sun and then we parted ways.

Jean suggested that I not come to see him due to the rapid decline of his health and the fragility of his condition by that time.

His memorial gathering and celebration of life at the Wheeler Arts Building later that year was the most amazing tribute. Persons spoke of a father, a husband, a friend, of a twin brother…so loved…so missed…and so remembered. 

And so unknown to me, despite all the many hours spent together in our art world conversations and dreams. Whole lifetimes of adventures, he never mentioned once.

I thought about his artworks. As all encompassing as our Milky Way. As unfathomable as a drop of water with an ocean full of creatures never seen.

His art showcased his thoughts and his talent. His awe of perfection. His aim for perfection. His efforts to resolve everything, to sum everything, tie up all loose ends, all within the four corners of his work.

It’s not possible, of course, and planets and protons, white noise and space dust, all spittle and spill, arc and cartwheel out beyond the edge of his paper or canvas. Terry Steadham was honest in that way.

Terry Steadham Walking in Indianapolis in summer of 1999

Rodney Walker - Art World Remembers

Rodney Walker on porch of T.C.Steele home, Nashville, Indiana 1999  photo by the author

Rodney Walker, Artist

I met the artist Rodney Walker about twenty-five years ago when we both rented space in the Faris Building, the hulking box of cheap rent and plentiful studio space on the near south side of downtown Indianapolis. The inaugural exhibit and opening in my art gallery on the fifth floor had occurred on May 2, 1997 and Walker was showing work in Lois Main Templeton’s seventh floor studio the same day. By June, Walker had rented studio space on the east side of the fourth floor and joined the Faris Building artist community. Walker’s studio, like all spaces in the building, had huge banks of windows on the outside wall, with his looking out onto Old Meridian Street directly across to the former original Manual High School.



I’m not certain when our paths first crossed, but certainly by the late summer we met, as my visitor book indicates he attended both the opening and closing receptions for Paul Neufelder’s paintings on glass which ran from August 22 through October 25. He signed the book R Walker, with his West 10th Street address, at the exhibition’s opening, but by the show’s closing, he signed in with a new declaration; Rodney Walker Artist, 400 Suite Faris Building.



In a conversation I had with Walker, in early 2001, he recalled the year and a half he spent in the Faris Building with great fondness. “The saddest day I had was knowing that I had to leave. I left my home, Christmas Eve (1997), and never went back to it. I lived and slept in the Faris Building, and lived and breathed my art.” Walker left a personal note under my gallery doors in November 1998 before he left. ‘No words can describe the way I feel. The many cold and hot nights and days we’ve talked about life and art. I thank you.’ The Faris Building was notoriously hot in the summer and cold in the winter, with its glass exterior, rickety steam radiators and no AC. His note ended with his best wishes and advised me he was setting up a new studio on N. Belmont Ave.



Rodney Walker observing the renovations to the former Faris Building, August 1999 
photo by the author

Walker was mainly self-taught as a painter, sculptor and comic strip artist. Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1946, his early education includes graduation from Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis in 1965 and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Work from Indiana State University in 1970.Walker’s formal art training was the completion of a two-year correspondence art course in 1991 and some drawing classes at the Indianapolis Art Center in 1996.

Noteworthy work produced during this period included his comic strip Sef Chaney, U.S. Marshal which ran in the Indianapolis Recorder from 1993-1997, and a portrait series of drawings Tuskegee Airmen – Indianapolis Chapter which was created for the 1997 National Convention held in Indianapolis.

The Black Angels of Pelelliu, Rodney Walker, photocopy of a charcoal drawing, dated 8-99

Informally, Walker studied art and artists relentlessly, viewing VHS tapes and pouring over books from his local libraries, attending galleries and museums and perhaps most importantly, visiting artists’ studios.

Once, after his Faris Building times, his Haughville apartment suffered a break-in and his VHS player was stolen. He was upset his art studies were interrupted so callously and looked forward to replacing the VCR as soon as he received his next paycheck. His employer at that time, in the early 2000s was Indianapolis Public Schools where he worked periodically as a substitute teacher.


Walker was friendly and sociable and moved through various art circles in Indianapolis.

In the wake of the closing of the Faris Building in the Spring of 1999, new scenes were forming at the newly christened Murphy Art Center in Fountain Square, the Harrison Center in the vicinity of Herron School of Art and the Bodner Building on Madison Avenue. He had friends and acquaintances in all those places.


Walker works on his Horse sculpture, his painting They Worked Hard and Paid the Price on the wall behind, 2000,  photo by author

Walker visited my Irvington home often, sometimes on the hottest days of summer, to beat the heat of his apartment which lacked AC. I had a window air conditioner in my home and the cool air blew directly onto the area where Walker worked on various things including clay figure soldiers for a diorama project he was creating for display at the Indiana War Memorial Museum downtown.

Rodney Walker Drawing in His Sketchbook, graphite on cardstock, 2000, 
drawing by the author

Walker loved catfish dinners and we went to Old Country Buffet many times, at Southern Plaza in those days, where he would run into young restaurant workers that knew him from his substitute teaching at nearby Manual High School. We discussed art scene goings on and events of the day, but also his favorite artists. He took pride in the accomplishments and was inspired by the painters of the famed Harlem Renaissance, mainly Horace Pippin and Jacob Lawrence. Another favorite was Robert H. Colescott, who was a mentor, and provided advice and encouragement via the telephone conversations instigated by Walker over the course of a period of time.





(Title Unknown), Rodney Walker,  mixed media drawing, 1998

I accompanied Walker on pilgrimages to the T.C Steele Studio and Museum property near Nashville, Indiana, and to view the Thomas Hart Benton murals around the campus at Indiana University in Bloomington.

They Worked Hard and Paid the Price, Rodney Walker, oil on canvas board, 1999

The subject matter of Walker’s paintings was drawn from his African American experience, both good and bad. As a baby boomer, the popular culture of his times also influenced his work.

The era of slavery is depicted in Going North, oil on un-stretched canvas, which shows the nighttime exodus of a family on the run. He described this work in early 2001 as one of his most ambitious and important. “The month before I left (the Faris Building), October ’98, I was happy with painting Going North. One of the artists gave me a piece of canvas in ’97. I didn’t know what to do with it. I feel to this day it is my best work. My pastor Kenneth Christmon has the painting in Richmond, Indiana.”


Going North, Rodney Walker, oil on canvas, 1998

Walker also recalled in 2000, “I have to think about the Marvin Gaye painting because that was a very intense project. I went down to the studio one Friday night from work. My friend Ralph (painter Ralph Domanico) was playing some Marvin Gaye tapes in his studio, I had a couple beers and remembered how I met Marvin Gaye in the summer of ’75.” The shared beers and music with an artist friend inspired the project that resulted Walker’s large format portrait of the singer, A Tribute to the Late Mr. Marvin Gaye.




In February 2000, additional works by Walker, in his solo show Planted Seeds from Early Black America, were shown in the storefront gallery I had on Meridian Street just south of the Faris Building.

Walker had great attendance and support for the opening reception of his Planted Seeds show. A boyhood friend and an ex girlfriend from his personal life as well as numerous others from his teaching life, his church worship community and his friends and fellow artists George Murff and Anthony Radford from his then current New Jersey St. studio scene.

Lois Main Templeton was in attendance, and artist Christos Koutsouras who purchased Walker's Only a Few Will Stand Together from the show. 






Rodney Walker in 2000 photo by the author

Walker participated in the annual Meet the Artists group show held at the Marion County Central Library location in Indianapolis in 1997, 1998, and beyond. 

Per Scott Miley’s Indianapolis Star article, Walker contributed three artworks self-described as ‘propaganda posters’ for display at the Somber Tribute, Serene Celebration on September 11, 2002 held at Ivy Tech State College in Indianapolis.

In February 2013, Rodney Walker collaborated with Bruce Armstrong and Harrison Center for the Arts in the group show Black Light. 

In March of 2016, Walker was a participant in The Forgiving Sea, an interactive painting by Carolyn Springer, displayed at the Harrison Center for the Arts.


Rodney Walker  (right) with the author on Talk Show in Project Space, Murphy Art Center, 2001 screenshot video by the author




Rodney Walker viewed the movie Basquiat every day for a month during the summer of 1998. At the end of that strange self-imposed trial, he produced an unusual and interesting painting of the same name, Basquiat. It shows two figures. A large imposing profile in the foreground dominates the canvas and depicts a man with huge hair looking toward a graffiti artist at work along a row of homes, tiny in the distance. There is just a speck of sunset sky. 
The viewer must decide which figure is which. Who is watching who? One generation observing the next? One part of the psych wary of another? The spraypaint can some kind of magic weapon, but against a king so massive and strong? Some elemental Basquiat-part of Walker, or of us?


-Mark Diekhoff



orig. published 4/24/23 4:42 PM 

Basquiat, Rodney Walker, oil on board

Rodney Walker, 70, passed away September 19, 2016.    

Above four paintings were included in Walker's exhibition Planted Seeds from Early Black America, February 2000

Collectors Gather for Epic Art Auction - Irvington Indiana Art News

2023 Spring Sale of Historic Indiana Art 

 Sunbathers  Simon Baus  oil on b

(Originally appeared in The Weekly View Community Newspaper, Vol 14, No 16, April 21, 2023)

INDIANAPOLIS – The Spring Sale of Historic Indiana Art occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, April 16 at The Arch on the near eastside of downtown Indianapolis. Over one hundred artworks covered the walls of the spacious venue and were put up for sale for those in attendance or bidding online. Co-hosted by Fine Estate Art and Jacksons Auction & Real Estate Company, the sale consisted of mostly Indiana-related paintings and other two-dimensional works that were either purchased by collectors or admired as if a museum exhibition by the more casual art lovers in the crowd.

A great variety of Indiana’s historic art and artists were represented including the stately, century-old views of Indiana beech forests by William McKendree Snyder, fiery first trees of autumn in woodland views by Hoosier Group artists J. Ottis Adams and Otto Stark, and bright colored impressions of summer by Irvington master, William Forsyth. Speaking further of Forsyth, two examples of his quirky and wonderful watercolor greeting cards were also sold. One of the cards, an art nouveau mini-masterpiece of an idyllic waterfront included the humorous New Years caption in the artist’s recognizable hand, ‘1st 1916 – To The Forsyths From The Forsyths’. It was sent to nearby neighbors who shared not only Forsyth’s Irvington neighborhood, but also his friendship and the same last name.

Also noteworthy were two Brown County exhibition-size paintings possessing a warm, soft-focus grandeur by Adolph Robert Shulz, a bi-colored pinwheel of red and white summer flowers in a still life floral by Leota Loop and several stunning (and large!) architectural streetscapes by Harry Davis.

For specialty collectors, original James Whitcomb Riley book illustration artworks were sold including an Ethel Franklin Betts’ unusual Mother and Child, in which both the face of mother and child are hidden and unseen due to the artist’s daring composition. Will Vawter was not only a favorite Riley book illustrator, but also a member of the Brown County Group of artists. Several of his commercial illustration originals were sold such as the grayscale gouache Easy Chair (along with a copy of the J.W. Riley book in which it appeared) and the graphite sketch of a yesteryear’s slacker, Daydreamer.

The drama-infused glitter of Glenn Cooper Henshaw’s dynamic nocturnal pastel drawings, particularly Woolworth Building, New York, were popular with a crowd of excited young collectors who sat in the front few rows and snatched them up one after the next as the gavel fell.

Contemporary and still living artists sold well including 1980s Indianapolis artist Stephen Stoller’s street person portrait Outside the Corner Store which reached the pre-auction estimate maximum with its winning bid.

Of particular interest to my eyes was Jan Zwara’s virtuoso Brown County Winter Landscape. A Steve Mannheimer art column from the Indianapolis Star back in 1993 discussed this talented and troubled artist at length. Like Vincent Van Gogh, this artist suffered periods of mental illness. Indeed, Zwara was confined to Indianapolis’ Central State Hospital in 1938 for treatment. His Winter Landscape denotes no distress, but rather a balanced and poised perfection. Close inspection of the painting reveals the singularly unique and novel brushstrokes of a beautiful mind.

-Mark Diekhoff

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