Just when I thought the fun in North Carolina had come to an end my lovely friend, Becca, said that I had to see Clyde Jones’ crazy sculptures before I went home.

We got in the car one afternoon and drove for about an hour or more. I had no idea where we were heading, but we ended up in a tiny (dot-on-the-map) town called Bynum, NC. It was actually less than “a town” – more like a sprinkling of houses along a country road. There was a general store that was open only occasionally and a small public building, and that was it. Driving through Clyde’s ‘hood, I noticed that just about every house had a wooden sculpture in front.  Many sculptures were reindeer, festooned with lights. It must be quite a cheerful scene in the dark days of winter.

The creatures

We parked the car and walked towards Clyde’s wee house.  The front porch was papered with photographs of people who had stopped by for a visit and the front and back yard hosted a menagerie of sculptures. There were reindeer, giraffes, pigs, alligators (lots),  horse-like critters with saddles, and Santa. All were glorious fantasy shades of pink, turquoise, green, blue, and polka-dots.  We took a quick tour of the yard when Becca suggested that we knock on the door and say hello. (Canadians don’t do that type of thing. We’re more inclined to drive by, maybe twice, and look without pointing. We would never knock on a stranger’s door just to say howdy-do. ) But I managed to sidle up to the front porch while she knocked on the door.

A minute went by without any movement from within. Then the door cracked open and the gentleman himself – Clyde Jones – stood at the door. (A dark cavern loomed behind him and my mind turned to the three horror films I have seen in my life.) However, Clyde was very gracious and delighted that we had dropped by to see his critters. We were invited to spend some time exploring his collection.

We amused ourselves in the garden before Clyde came out to meet us. Then a neighbour dropped by to join the gathering. Becca is a graduate student with a keen interest in NC history and sociology. She was engaged in an intelligent conversation with Clyde et al while I stood there mute, dripping with sweat, wondering how to get out of the blistering sun. As far as I could figure, it was about 180 degrees Fahrenheit that day, but they didn’t seem to notice. They thought it was kind of amusing that we northerners can’t stand the heat.

Clyde began his wood work many years ago after an injury at the mill. He is very proud of his sculptures, and apparently refuses to sell them. As I understand it, he will give sculptures to friends, but won’t sell them. He has been asked to sell sculptures to NY buyers, but isn’t interested in that market. He laughs at the absurdity (to him) of taking his sculptures to an exhibit in NYC. But I can understand why everyone would like to take a creature-sculpture home with them. They are charming, amusing, quirky, and certainly every child’s vision of “good art.”

Clyde seems happy enough just making his sculptures out of found pieces of wood and does it “just because he likes doing it”.

I wondered how I would get a sculpture home to Vancouver if I became “a friend” of Clyde Jones. How would I describe my bulky package to the Customs Officers? We left with a promise to drop by again, and mail him a photo to pin to his porch.  Driving out of Bynum, I was impressed by the number of friends that Clyde has. If I ever visit Clyde again, I’m going to take note of which neighbours don’t have a sculpture, and ask him for the details of the dispute.

Renaldo Kuhler

I had the privilege to meet Ronaldo Kuhler on my visit to Raleigh, NC to see the Annie Hooper collection (see earlier blog). A screening of the film, Rocaterrania, was scheduled for showing at the Gregg Museum of Art and Design one evening in August. I was looking forward to meeting the man who created this alternative world.

When I arrived, Renaldo was sitting in a wheelchair, visiting with guests in the exhibit room. I introduced myself and he responded with, “Nice teeth!” I’m not sure if Miss Manners has any advice on how to reply to this greeting. Does one say, “You, too!” or “I’ll tell my dentist!” or … what? I simply thanked him and complimented him on the exhibit. When it was time to view the film, he sat next to me and we had a pleasant chat before the film started. I was curious to know what this man was “really” like and, in particular, how deeply he identified with the residents of Rocaterrania. (Read: did he live in this world or that?)

Renaldo was very interested to learn that I am from Canada; the country of Rocaterrania straddles the border between the northern USA and Canada, somewhere around Ontario. He had questions about the Canadian political scene, and we discussed politics for a short while. (He is not happy about the current government in the USA.) Surprisingly, he is reasonably well-informed about Canada, something that doesn’t happen often in the southern States. Renaldo hadn’t seen the film for a couple of years, and was delighted to see himself on screen. He laughed at the amusing things he said, and confirmed (out loud) random statements he made on film. He nudged me when he got to the part about the location of Rocaterrania, and I felt rather proud that Canada had allowed his country to co-exist with mine.

One of the highlights of the evening was having dinner later with Renaldo and the film-makers. Renaldo was in fine spirits, and downed more glasses of Canadian whiskey than I could count. He patiently answered all of my questions about Rocaterrania (there are very few cars; it is a democracy, etc.), posed for many photographs, sang me Rocaterrania’s national anthem, and commented several times on the shorts that our waitress was wearing (all shorts are sexy – I guess that’s why he wears them).

Several things stay with me:

I asked him what it felt like to be famous, and he said he enjoyed it with dignity and humility. And his father would not believe it if he were alive.

I asked him if he was the character “Peekle” in Rocaterrania. He stated, “No. I am Rocaterrania. His stories help him make sense of his life. For example, the nicest landlady he ever had shows up as a kind and loving character in Rocaterrania. The people who were unkind to him in the past meet their fate in his own country, where he makes the rules and controls their destiny.

Renaldo has found an in genious way to make sense of his own life. It is not so weird or incomprehensible. It is rather sobering.

More photos of Renaldo Kuhler and scenes from Rocaterrania can be found on Brett Ingram’s website: Bright Eye Pictures.

Photo from Ingram

My interest in the world of Rocaterrania – and its creator, Renaldo Kuhler – began in 2009 when I saw the film, Rocaterrania, at the Vancouver International Film Festival. I had seen a few films about outsider artists, like Henry Darger, and the trailer suggested that Kuhler’s work would be just as intriguing. I was not disappointed.

Seventy-nine-year-old Renaldo Kuhler was the scientific illustrator at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for most of his life. As the story goes, filmmaker Brett Ingram was taken on a tour of the museum, where he was introduced to Renaldo. He recognized him as the man he had often seen walking around Raleigh.

Renaldo is hard to miss. He is over 6 feet in stature and wears a “uniform” that he designed himself – navy blue walking shorts, a military-looking jacket or vest, a neck scarf, and a cap. His white beard and hair, tied back in a pony-tail, complete the picture. He looks like a very large boy scout, and he is very particular and proud of his outfit.

In addition to admiring Renaldo’s scientific illustrations, Brett noticed some unusual drawings pasted on Renaldo’s office walls. There were many drawings of the same male character (I later learned that his name is Peekle), and a few other intriguing architectural drawings. Over the years, Brett came to know this intensely private man, and his imaginary world called Rocaterrania. Until then, Renaldo had not shared his world with anyone. Years later, Renaldo agreed to let his world be recorded on film.

Who is this remarkable man?

“Ronald” grew up in what he describes as a dysfunctional home. His father, Otto Kuhler, was a well-known industrial designer of American railroads. The family moved from New York to a remote farm in Colorado when Renaldo was a young boy. He hated the isolation of the farm and his mother’s expectation that he would grow into a strapping young ranch-hand. Renaldo, however, preferred to stay in his room and construct his imaginary world called Rocaterrania. His parents discouraged his writing and drawing and, as Renaldo says, life was very difficult for him. His move to college didn’t provide much relief, as his classmates endlessly mocked and tormented him.

He graduated with a degree in history, changed his name to Renaldo, and by chance, ended up as the natural science illustrator at the museum in Raleigh, NC. It seems there he found freedom from everyone else’s expectations and he could dedicate himself to creating his fantasy domain.

A sign to guide visitors

Annie Miller was born in 1897 in the easternmost town of North Carolina. She grew up with 12 siblings and 14 foster children. The Methodist church was the centre of their community life. She married John Hooper, a commercial fisherman, and had one child, Edgar.

Life in remote Stumpy Point, NC was quiet and predicable until America entered the Second World War. Most of the men left to join the war effort; her husband went to work further north at the shipyards in Norfolk and Edgar was sent to the South Pacific. Annie buckled under the stress of the war and her life became lonely and unbearable. Not wanting to be alone, she joined her husband up north and opened a boarding house.

After the war, Annie hoped that life would return to the status quo – John and she would return to Stumpy Point, and Edgar would return to their family home. But that was not to be. Edgar stayed in the Philippines for a year after the war, and Annie’s health deteriorated. Edgar returned when he was 30 years old, and had a different vision for his life. He lived for a short while in his parents’ house, but soon married and moved away. He was then stricken with lung problems and was sent to the mountains for a year of convalescence.

This second and prolonged absence from Edgar triggered Annie’s breakdown, followed by a deep depression. She stayed with her twin sister (Mamie) in Raleigh, North Carolina, for four months while she received medical treatment. (One can only speculate what treatment she received in the late 1940s.) Sister Mamie worked as a teacher at the prison in Raleigh and tended to the spiritual needs of the prisoners on death row. Annie saw how the prisoners took comfort in religion, with the saints, with the biblical heroes. When Annie returned home, she studied an illustrated Bible while she was resting. One day, she modelled a piece of driftwood into Moses on Mount Nebo looking over the River Jordan into the Promised Land of Canaan, the first of her Biblical “symbols”. She soon spent all her free time creating Biblical stories from clay, driftwood, paint, and cement. The Creator, she said, could be found in everything, and she could discern figures and faces in objects from nature – driftwood, clouds, roots, and twigs.

Annie believed that God guided her to create her works, but her creations had particular meaning in her own psyche. She chose to depict scenes that represented traumatic events her own emotional life – loneliness, fear of loss, separation from home and family.

As the community became aware of her work, she led visitors through her home, narrating the scenes as they followed her though a maze of statues. In 1978, John suffered a stroke, and her work came to a halt. She could no longer guide people through the sculptural scenes in her home, so she set up hundreds of signs with instructive messages. She died in 1986, leaving unfinished statues in her workshop – 47 grieving Hebrew mothers.

This biography is a summary of Roger Manley’s manuscript, “A Blessing From the Source: The Annie Hooper Bequest,” published in conjunction with an exhibit at the North Carolina State University in 1988. Roger was privileged to meet Annie Hooper in 1970 when he was 18 and she was 73 and to marvel at her life’s work in its original setting.

By request, more photos of the Annie Hooper collection of statues. The first is a “creature”, the rest are Biblical figures.

Before I tell you about Annie Hooper herself, I want to tell you about Annie the artist. The most remarkable thing about Annie Hooper – and the reason why I am in North Carolina – is her creation of 2,500 statues from found material.  At the end of World War II, she spent the next 35 years of her life making them from driftwood, putty and cement. Almost all depict Biblical characters and scenes.

Annie first had them all set up in her house, and from what I understand, there was barely room to walk around the crowds of little people. Believing that God was directing her to create this work, her intention was to introduce others to the teachings of the Bible. She chose to recreate Bible scenes that were meaningful to her – the Annunciation, Jacob’s dream, the Resurrection, to name a few. She did not recreate some scenes, such as the Crucifixion, which is somewhat puzzling given its significance in Biblical narrative.

Strangers who arrived at her home were invited in for a tour of the various scenes, with Annie narrating the stories. When her husband became ill and she did not have time to conduct personal tours of her home, she left signs with messages to accompany the statues. Her life’s work was never intended for sale or public display in a gallery; she only wanted others to appreciate the messages in the Bible and what they had taught her.

The statues are currently housed in the basement of the Gregg Museum of Art and Design in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was let into the dimly lit room and sat with the wee folk for quite some time. Each statue is about 18 inches tall, some with wings, some carrying staffs, all alike but different.  Others have described being with the statues as “creepy”, but I felt nothing strange. They are lovely and extraordinary, and I wish that I had the opportunity to see them displayed as Annie intended.

Annie's suitcase

I know I’m supposed to be writing about Canadian outsider art, but here I am in Raleigh, North Carolina. I got up early enough to make my arrival at the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, not too early to appear pathetic, but not too late to appear uninterested.  (In truth, it took me a frustrating hour to get there with an Egyptian cab driver, Sammi. But I digress.)

So, the Gregg Museum is on the second floor of the student centre at the University of North Carolina, and you get there by dragging yourself up 3 flights of stairs in insufferable heat. I met Roger Manley, the Museum’s gracious director, when I arrived, and he sat me down at a big table with a stack of documents and two suitcases of papers left by Annie Hooper. Heavenly. I spent the entire day sifting through a mountain of letters, poems, and novels left by Annie. I call her “Annie” only because I had the chance to catch a glimpse of her in the two days I spent reading the material she left behind. I discovered that Annie was a prolific writer of poems, sermons, and stories.

The manuscript

I started with her novel because I believe that so much of a person can be discerned from his or her writings, even if they are fictionalized. My heart sank when I read the title of her novel – Swastika, A Good Omen. I thought I was about to uncover a nasty anti-Semitic secret about artist Annie. In fact, it turned out to be a romantic novel, in the style of Jane Austen, with the title referencing the ancient meaning of swastika – a lucky or auspicious object.

I am a child of the 60s and 70s. I grew up with a view to righting the wrongs of gender inequality. I eschewed the trappings of conventional gender roles and stereotypes and believed that, within a short time, a better world would emerge from the ashes. But I have a proclivity for Jane Austen novels. I admit it.  The male character is always terribly misunderstood and maligned by society, but in the end, the virtuous female character gets the (misunderstood but honourable) man, she gets the house, she gets the money. Hmm. Annie’s novel follows this traditional story line. In the end Lena gets the poor (but soon to be rich) Walter. She gets the refurbished house (named “Swastika”) and she lives in fabulous wealth, happily and forever after. Indeed, I have stripped the plot to omit all metaphors of birds trapped in cages, lengthy descriptions of incredible dresses with lace and velvet trimmings, and declarations of unrequited love (a la Romeo and Juliet), but you get the gist of it.

I wondered how this novel would set me up for viewing Annie’s sculptures the next day. I didn’t yet know what I may have learned about my artist.