A Cecil Head Scrapbook

“If there is one thing I'm good at, it's keeping a scrapbook.”  Cecil F. Head , April 1988

AI image by Gemini for illustrative purposes only

Cecil Head Looks Back.

One imagines the first leaves of Spring pushing the fading show of fluttering blossoms,  pink on the redbud, white on the dogwood. And either a clear blue sky or a grayer wind─your choice, your imagination. And  the weather being so fickle in April Indiana.

You might not have to imagine at all, but just open your eyes and see... 

A plain little house, modest but sturdy, and well kept,  just off a rural crossroads. It's a part of town clear near the outskirts, almost country, but then, oh clock,  sparsely industrial with gravel dust and the sound of big wood chopping, until finally now, engulfed in the commercial noise and glut of southside suburban sprawl. It's a moving picture, a changing scene, on the edge of every city, but this one Whiteland, Indiana, and this humble little place the home of artist Cecil Head. 

Cecil Head, in his early eighties, sat for an interview, with his local paper in April of 1988. One imagines, in that house. 

Michael Aldrich's Daily Journal article “Whiteland painter speaks out on art” appeared in the Franklin, Indiana paper on  April 27, 1988. He spoke to Head

about the exhibition of two of his paintings in the 20th Joslyn Biennial, at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska from April 2 through May 15, 1988. The paintings, 'A Real Bee on Sunflower' and 'Sweet Indiana Corn' both depicted the artist's Indiana scene, perhaps right outside his door.

Head explained that on the Sunflower picture, which he was painting away at in his studio, a bee flew in, buzzing around. The bee paid the ultimate price for being too attracted to the spiraling disc flowers of Head's huge sunflower bloom and was caught by the artist and stuck right on the wet paint, then and there.

Cecil Head  A Real Bee on Sunflower

By there, I mean the location of Head's art journey, most all in central Indiana, from birth in Lebanon, to art school in Indianapolis and then home and gallery association in Whiteland and Greenwood in Johnson County. By then, Head had been for sixty years making art, although a little off and on, as he was to explain, looking back, and looking up large from a large black-bound album, his artist scrapbook. 

The flow of art preserved as brittle columns of newsprint,  photos, awards and exhibitions, clipped and pasted like specimens in a way, like the bee to the sunflower. The oldest entries taking on the yellow varnish of the patina of passing time. A fresher new sadness followed by a reawakened art, and a philanthropy, and the inevitable death of art friends in the bright, white latest pages. 

The artist's fingers, tracing his path through the pages of the book, the arc of his arrow of time, grounded so near his Indiana scene, yet also once so near to the sun.

A Tall and Dark Young Man.

Page one of Head's scrapbook is a large photograph, an 8 x 10, showing a John Herron classroom with five students and an instructor, among easels.

The identities and the date are not noted on the Bass Company photo of four men and two women, and five visible artworks (three of which share the same subject of a standing uniformed man, either military or police, speaking to a group of women  in a kitchen-like setting.)

John Herron Art School ca. 1929

A tall young man, impeccably dressed in suit and tie with a thick shock of Clark Gable hair, stands in profile far to the side of the other students and their instructor. The dark stranger is leaning  back on his heals, holding paint brushes before a painting, listening on. The composition of the photograph and its grouping of figures mirrors the composition of the artworks in their midst.

The scrapbook was his own, with no need to annotate for himself. His memories could fill in the gaps. But as he is gone some many years ago, the scrapbook contains mysterious to be unraveled or conclusions to be inferred.

A Depression Era Golden Age.

Likely in his own handwriting, page two of the scrapbook is Head's curriculum vitae.

He writes that he studied art at the John Herron Art School.

He lists a number of his important awards and exhibitions from what looks to be his most productive and successful period, 1933 through 1941.

In 1933, Lucille E. Morehouse in her Indianapolis Star column 'In the World of Art', discusses Cecil Head's still life winner of the J. I. Holcomb Prize at the 26th Annual 'Indiana Artists' exhibit at the John Herron Institute of Art.

Cecil Head, Holcomb Prize Winner 1933

“While there is nothing especially original or unusual in the objects selected for this composition...” referring to the pots and jars and vegetables depicted in the painting,  “...the work has that indefinable something that makes it art. There are no mannerisms, no straining after technical effects. The young artist won his prize with honest work on a picture whose style is straightforward and convincing in its simplicity.”

A year later in 1934, in the 27th Annual 'Indiana Artists' exhibit, Head was awarded Honorable Mention in the figure composition category for his ambitious painting, 'Builders'.  Again, Ms. Morehouse covered the work in her art review column, saying the painting is “...a figure composition full of life and vigor.”  She continues, “Cecil Head  not only did good figure work in his group of seven men, busied with different tasks, but he used fresh, beautiful color, and well-balanced masses of lights and darks, that help to make his canvas an outstanding one.”

Cecil Head  The Builders

The same painting won the prize for best figure painting later that year at the Indiana State Fair art competition. To put the State Fair win in proper perspective, Hoosier Group legend William Forsyth won the outstanding landscape award in the same show. It was a showcase of the best and the brightest in those days.

Her column remarks favorably on not only Head's industrial and urban landscapes, but also winter and water scenes, in watercolor or oil, as well as his handling of portraits, complimenting the artist's beauty of color and form, and deft mastery of light and shadow.

In 1937, Cecil Head's painting 'A Winter Day' split a landscape prize at the Hoosier Salon annual exhibit held in Chicago.

But a bigger prize was coming later that year in the 'Indiana Artists' annual at the John Herron gallery, when 'Indiana Potato Planters' received the Meritorious Work of Art award.

Cecil Head  Indiana Potato Planters

Covered by Lucille Morehouse in her 'In the World of Art' column, she says of the Head painting, “ It is not altogether the depth of color, but the depth of emotional feeling, as well, that gives intensity in the blue sky back of the big red barn...”  And further, “...two tall lank-bodied farmers are walking down the potato patch...their simple work clothes take on a beauty of color, the small deep-furrowed lot takes on a luminosity under the bright sun...” 

In 1939, Head was included in the exhibit 'American Art Today' at the Contemporary Art Pavilion at The New York World's Fair. (It is not noted in the scrapbook the artwork Head displayed.)

A final glimpse of the type of work described enthusiastically by Morehouse in numerous columns in the 30's can be seen in his painting 'Along Fall Creek' which was exhibited in the 33rd Annual 'Indiana Artists' show at John Herron. The urban winter scene is presumably circa 1940, although the clipping is not dated.

The meritorious 'Indiana Potato Planters' was later exhibited as part of the 'Directions in American Painting' exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1941. 

Cecil Head's Indiana Potato Planters at the Carnegie Institute  1941

And with that, a gap, the scrapbook pages from 16 to 23 are missing.

A Hiatus of Years and a Late Life Renewal.

According to various interviews many pages later in the scrapbook, the Great Depression and a commercial art career curtailed Cecil Head's fine art output for the middle forty years of his life.  But after the death of his wife, Leverna, and an illness of his own, and after the urging of friends, he found himself more active before the easel once again.

He renewed his association with his fellow 'Market Street Artists', Floyd Hopper and William Kaeser. (They had run a studio gallery in the Union Trust Building on Market Street in Indianapolis for about ten years in the '30s.)

In July 1977, Head along with  newly christened 'Hoosier Five' artists, Hopper, Kaeser, Wilbur Meese and Adolph Wolter presented works of various media at the IUPUI Student Union in Indianapolis.

Head, again along with Kaeser and the addition of Louise Johnson  exhibited as three members of the same 'Five' group at the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce on North Meridian Street in October 1979.

Around this time he donated his favorite painting, 'Indiana Potato Planters' to the Franklin (IN) Public Library where it remains to this day.

Cecil Head   Indiana Potato Planters  Franklin Public Library

Head continued to enter works in the Indiana State Fair art competition and won a third place in the professional oil painting category in 1982.

A solo show of the artist's work was presented at the Southside Art League Gallery in September 1984. He donated one of his paintings on display, a winter landscape, for the benefit of the Art League's building fund. 

Two months later at the Irvington Historical Society, Head displayed a portrait of  William Kaeser as a young man. Kaeser, a resident of Irvington and Head's friend since art school and the Union Building days, was being honored by the Society. 

Head actually exhibited both the Kaeser portrait and a self portrait, side by side, both created in the late '20s, early '30s era.  A scrapbook image of the men and the paintings reveal little due to poor resolution of the image, however, a thick shock of hair atop the self portrait painting does seem to indicate the tall dark student on page one of the scrapbook is Cecil Head.  

In addition to the two classmate portraits, Head's seated portrait, 'The Nun' created fifty years prior as well, was also on display. 

An Overdue Acclaim and His Continuing Philanthropy.

Cecil Head attained a newfound appreciation upon reaching the grand age of eighty.

For his birthday in 1986, the Southside Art League Gallery honored Head with an exhibition and a buffet supper on July 1. 

In a Perry Weekly article dated June 26, Head explains what he paints─“the Indiana scene.” 

His Herron instructors, including William Forsyth, Clifton Wheeler, Oakley Richey, Paul Hadley and Frank Schoonover instilled the appreciation for what is near to be dear.  Head explains that he never traveled much, that there was no need to go a thousand miles.

“There's plenty to paint right here.”

The Art League birthday retrospective called 'The Cecil Head Show' was also covered by art writer Marion Garmel in her 'Brush Strokes' column in the Indianapolis News. Garmel writes, “Head...would have been called an American regionalist. His strong, blocky composition is reminiscent of Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton. But (it was)...his color sense...(that) intrigued the critics. You can see that... in 'The Builders', a 1934 painting of bricklayers and masons that sparkles as though it were painted yesterday.”

Newer paintings she describes in the column include 'Sweet Indiana Corn' and 'Light on My Wood Pile', both in acrylic and pastel.

A few months later, on October 26, a slide lecture was presented by Patricia and Frank Owings of Pleasant Run Gallery, on behalf of the Irvington Historical Society.  The lecture was called 'Painting the American Scene in Indiana'  and featured the 1930s art of Cecil Head, Floyd Hopper, William Kaeser and George Jo Mess. The lecture also compared these artists' work with other American regionalists of the time; Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Burchfield, Edward Hopper and Grant Wood.

Cecil Head  Evening Meal  discussed in 'Painting the American Scene in Indiana' lecture

The renewed interest in Head's early works resulted in almost all of the '30s works being sold.

In this period of late success, Head's scrapbook pages contain, one after another, the clipping of obituaries of his instructors and fellow artists.  First Oakley Richey. Then Floyd Hopper, followed by William Kaeser. 

The sad pages, though, are interspersed with the smiling face of Cecil Head, announcing the formation of a fine arts scholarship to be awarded annually to a Johnson County high school senior to pay toward art school tuition. Cecil Head provided the initial $1000 donation to the fund in January 1988.  

Head was to live to see the the scholarship awarded.  A local community paper The Gazette on May 24, 1989, shows recipient Stephanie McWilliams, a senior from Center Grove High School, receiving the honor at his side. A young artist at the start, and an old one near his end.

Having already taken classes at John Herron and studied a summer in Paris, Ms. McWilliams would be attending Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, that fall. Her early art journey already taking her further afield than Cecil Head from his humble home.  

But his dream was to paint his Indiana scene. And he did that. And in the photo, almost his last, they both smile the same smile.

The smile of joy, a creation awaits.

Cecil Head's self portrait as an art student?  ca. 1929

Mark Diekhoff, May 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.

Lucille E. Morehouse − The First Word on Indiana Art

AI image by Gemini for illustrative purposes only

About six years ago I was on a walk through my Irvington neighborhood, accompanied by artist and painter, William B. Lawson.  Lawson was acting as a guide to noteworthy houses and sites along the way, several of which had ties to a prior art history unknown to me. Even though I had been a resident of the neighborhood since the early 1990s, I was almost entirely unaware, even ignorant, of the history of the town. 

We were on our way to the Kile Oak, a local landmark among others that had escaped my attention to that point in time.  

The Kile Oak really is magnificent, as I was to discover, and I’d recommend a visit if you haven’t already, particularly if you live within walking distance. 

As we were leaving the shady space beneath the centuries old tree, Lawson directed my attention to a home across the way. Nondescript, a weathered-white cottage on a slight rise from the road.

 

“Lucille Morehouse lived in that house,” Lawson said, pointing.

A 'Newspaper Nose' and Her Call to Adventure.

In one of the earliest art columns penned by Lucille E. Morehouse in the Indianapolis Star, she was on a walk. The date of the column is Sunday, April 13, 1913. 

She invites the readers along for her stroll in a pedestrian-friendly downtown Indianapolis in search of a few groceries to fill the “little, speckled market basket” on her arm. On her quaint shopping list was “a tiny bit of cheese done up in tinfoil, a paper bucket of baked beans−always the baked beans−and always just a nickel’s worth.” Add on a few bananas and oranges and “some homemade doughnuts, at the little stand away back in the Alabama Street part of the Market House.” Finally, she almost forgot, she tells us “...and, oh, dear me, the half pound of butter at 40 cents the pound!”

The most ordinary scene is set. The unremarkable and timeless routine of grocery shopping.

And then, the inexplicable.

We call it the sixth sense today. Or perhaps gut instinct in days gone by. Lucille Morehouse called the primordial tug at her being her ‘newspaper nose.’

And for good reason, by the date of her column that Sunday in April 1913, when she was in her early forties, she had logged decades of experience as a newspaper pro. First as the editor of the Purdue Exponent student newspaper while in college, then as a society editor in the Lafayette Morning Journal during her post-graduate teaching days, and finally, again as the society editor, for the Milwaukee Journal in Wisconsin when she relocated to that city to teach later on. 

Ms. Morehouse describes vividly the 180 degree instant her mundane trek toward doughnuts and butter took an about-face toward what, only time would tell, her art world life on the brink of beginning.

“There was no other choice than to follow the nose. It led me past the Monument and into a little art shop, then back into a tearoom−under the pretense that I was tired out and needed a cup to refresh me.”

Indeed, although her  journey would be uniquely her own, the inciting moment of her road less traveled was at the classic hero’s starting line−that dead end, tired-out point in dire need of refreshment, on the verge of every new adventure. 

A Nationwide 'Armory Show' Kind of Buzz.

Indianapolis was an art town in April 1913. For nearly twenty years the local Hoosier Group painters, including T.C. Steele and William Forsyth, had been making their name as a result of frequent and well-received exhibitions in Indiana  and also large regional cities such as Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. They earned their notoriety, perhaps popularity and even their moniker as a result of their many annual exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1890s up to that present day.

Just a few weeks earlier in February and March of 1913, art, a new and frightful art, took America by storm when what has become known as the Armory Show opened in New York City.

Controversy and debate raged in the American art world and in the pages of the American press in the seismic wake of the exhibition's opening. After the NYC stint, a large number of the most shocking European artworks from the exhibit had moved on to Chicago, continuing to generate mocking reviews and derisive headlines for the weeks leading up to the day of Ms. Morehouse's walk.

The International Exposition of Modern Art, its official name, shocked visitors, many would argue, with demented visions never imagined outside of the fever dreams in lunatic asylums. Cubism and Futurism were the wild and indecipherable rebels coming for the kings of Realism and the pretty princes of Impressionism. In the same violent and confusing coup, Post Impressionism was taking on Neo Impressionism, Fauvism, Pointillism, Symbolism and whatever the heck, whoever the heck. It was one helluva fight, one helluva sight. 

It is not likely such a notorious and ungainly ruckus would have escaped the curious attention of a seasoned newspaper lady such as Lucille Morehouse.

So when she found herself in the back room of the little art shop, being offered a tea, by a proprietor, who happened to be a friend of a visiting modern art painter from out East in Boston, and when she was offered a chance for a personal meeting with that beguiling out of town specimen... he was a indeed or supposedly a painter of the new art, post art, whatever the hell...how could she say no? 

And she didn't.

Enraptured, She Became an Artist, Herself.

William Emile Schumacher was the post impressionist painter, anticipated by the city's folk for the entire week preceding, and fresh in on the train down at Union Station. In town for his exhibit at the John Herron Art Institute.  

Lucille Morehouse describes their meeting in a most amazing way. She imagines herself as an artist, indeed a painter, and describes herself creating his portrait as a way of introducing him to her readers. This was long before selfies made everybody's appearance blasé. Keep in mind that in 1913, movies were barely invented and photography was still somewhat new.

Morehouse begins her 'portrait' with the artist's hair. “I would first put on the canvas a little fringe of bang, a very thin fringe of bang...”  

Then she moves on to the face.  “...two eyes (I would not make fifty, as some of those futurists might do...)” and “they would be very bright and look with a very direct, searching gaze.”  She would paint a nose, elongated, and  “...of course, I'd draw a mouth, just to keep my picture from being too much criticised.”

Then the rest of Mr. Schumacher she would attenuate and attenuate until he was drawn out “...very long and very thin.”

She paints in a background of colors, cheerful and joyous, bright and beautiful, á la Matisse from the sound of it.

Thus concludes the effusive picture from the imaginary artist's enlivened eyes. Perhaps Ms. Morehouse fanned herself in dainty gloves in faux bedazzlement, in the presence of such a creator. A ruse to inflate the impressive man's ego a bit, and loosen the lips on his under-described mouth? Savvy, she seems, that's for sure. Because she gets a lot out of him. And what follows is not so much an interview, or even a conversation. It is an eruption of artspeak from W. E. Schumacher. A monologue of self-vindication, his artist's statement, you could say.

Evolutionary Brevity, Twainsian Humor and Bullsh*t Detection.

W. E. Schumacher implores and then declares, right out of the gate, “...don't call me a cubist or a futurist...I am an evolution...” 

He explains, in layman's terms, although professorial in tone, the strati-graphic layers of art movements foundational to his state of being. Impressionism to neo impressionism to post impressionism and beyond. Beyond, the place atop and rarefied, that he has attained.

A puckered brow on Ms. Morehead's face seems to draw out further detailed definitions and magisterial explanations from the artist in what seems a losing battle to just be understood. 

In her homespun Hoosier way, she relays her amusement at the tortured machinations of his wordcraft by improvising a few sound bites of her own. She shorthands his three hallowed impressionisms, for brevity's sake, for the benefit of her readers, wink wink. What all art history majors would call the 'isms' in art, she calls the 'imps.'  You get the impression, though, that it's more a troll than an authentic editor's call, her devilish use of 'imp.'  

It might seem a harsh treatment to an artist more adept in the visual realm than the newspaper lady's world of words. But her tone is playful and common sense, Twainsian you could say, where everybody is playing and everybody knows it's a game. It's the art world, after all, where a picture's worth a thousand words. And with the advent of futurism, maybe a million.

Morehouse steers for the middle to end her column. She tones down her brilliance. No more storytelling, improvisation or satire.

She reports that Mr. Schumacher and his art can be seen at various locations around the city, including his temporary residence with a family over at Woodruff Place,  a lecture at the (Indianapolis) Propylaeum, and additional artworks displayed at the Adams-Downing Company on Monument Place.

She also advises that Mr. Schumacher intends to return to New York or was it Boston, somewhere out east, to continue lecturing, and perhaps start an art school some day. Post Imp, of course.

  

If Not a Star, a Spark.

This very early art column by Lucille E. Morehouse demonstrated her virtuosity as a writer. She must not have amused only herself but the paper's readers because The Indianapolis Star would soon dedicate an ornate banner to her byline, Art & Artists, and within a year or so, she was officially 'In the World of Art by Lucille E. Morehouse' in the Sunday edition for decades to follow.

Her many years penning society columns must have served well her preparation by midlife for that inspired moment when she and her newspaper nose ventured into an art shop instead of buying doughnuts.

And what of the acorn of her inspiration that would lead to a thirty years change of plans? Again, the Kile Oak comes to mind. 

Mark Diekhoff,  May 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.

See also

Lucille Morehouse Exhibit 

Art Museum of Greater Lafayette

https://www.artlafayette.org/lucille-morehouse

W. E. Schumacher painting  ca. 1913

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/appraisals/william-schumacher-oil-painting-ca-1913/

Judith Barter: When Modern Art Came to America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFfShVRmiKg

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