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Photo By Michele Howard
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Tommy Rueff shares his passion for art with Alicia
and Aterria Green, students in one of his Happen
classes.
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His dream began three years ago with a black-and-white photograph of his dog. Artist Tommy Rueff was more than happy to open his Corryville studio to visiting children from the Contemporary Arts Center's student outreach program. The catch was that he didn't want to bore the kids with another artist-lecturing-about-his-work experience. Basically, he wanted everyone to be an artist that day.
So Rueff took a photo of his dog chained to a pole and placed it against a black background. Next to the photo, he attached a small piece of blank canvas. The task was simple: Draw the place where you think the dog would rather be.
While Rueff watched the children draw, something inside him clicked.
Some people have sparks of inspiration and do nothing about them. Others stay busy trying to create a get-rich scheme. Rueff's great idea was less self-serving.
His spark was about unleashing the creative energy that exists inside every child. He saw it happen at his studio when a group of children were given the opportunity to draw.
That's where this story begins, inside an artist's Corryville studio. Actually, that's just the beginning. The story jumps ahead three years, because the real story is seeing Rueff's idea come to life.
Class One: July 6
Outside, the early evening traffic is a constant blur along Beechmont Avenue. Inside, behind an ordinary plaza storefront, sisters Alicia and Aterria Green are bargaining with a junkwoman who's selling shapes from her junkcart. They're using shapes to create a drawing, and Aterria finds just what she needs deep inside the cart: a rubber chicken.
It's the first in a series of five classes at Happen Inc., a non-profit company that Rueff formed in 1998, and already things are crazy. Happen mixes art education and creativity for a diverse class of adult/children teams.
Some of the teams are ordinary families from neighborhoods around town. Others are part of a partnership Happen formed with Project Connect, an organization that serves homeless children in Cincinnati. Scholarships are awarded that enable homeless children to participate in Happen with a mentor. That's the case for the Green sisters.
Rueff's main goal, he says, is that every Happen class is accessible to underprivileged kids.
The room is a swirl of neon colors. Salsa music plays in the background. Staff volunteers stay busy shaking noisemakers.
Rueff, 33, is the ringmaster of this colorful circus. At the end of class, he passes out Polaroid cameras to each team. The kids' assignment for next week is to take photos of shapes that spell out their names.
But before everyone leaves, Rueff wants to teach everyone the Happen cheer. He claps three times and the children yell "You Can Make It Happen!" One, two, three more claps, and the adults yell "Just Make It Through College!"
A printed mission statement can only begin to describe Happen Inc. The organization first opened its doors in January 1999 at a storefront in Corryville, where a program of five classes was created for children between the first and sixth grade paired with one of their legal guardians.
Activities focus around art awareness and building basic art skills. But the underlying philosophy is for Happen to strengthen the family by offering time for a child and his or her guardian to share.
Happen's symbol -- a young boy wearing a golden crown, flying through the sky with his arms outstretched -- helps capture its innocent spirit of creativity. Rueff knows that there's a lot of educational arts programming throughout Cincinnati -- but he's confident there's nothing like Happen.
Roof Over His Head
Starting a non-profit arts organization isn't the best way to make money. Still, most people would be surprised by just how simply Rueff lives his life.
His Northside house is a three-story collection of vacant rooms, with Rueff making his home on two rooms on the second floor. The laundry room comprises his shower, sink, washer and dryer. His adjacent bedroom offers little more than a mattress. The only perk is a TV and a VCR tucked away in the corner.
The cliche term to describe Rueff would be "starving artist." But the truth of the matter is that he's unwilling to give himself a salary from Happen until the organization becomes financially stable.
His spartan lifestyle would impress a Tibetan monk. But he's not complaining.
"Well, you always wish for things," Rueff said recently, sitting in his backyard.
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Photo By Michele Howard
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Rueff leads students in the Happen class cheer.
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His face is flushed from the summer humidity. His thick, black hair sticks to his shoulders. Rueff is dressed like he is most days: baggy blue jeans, suede hiking boots and a T-shirt.
It's clear that he's miserable in the heat, but there's no air-conditioning in his house. On this July morning, Rueff's best shot at comfort lies in a shady backyard.
"You always see things that you'd like, and this is going to sound really corny, but the one thing that really opened my eyes was the movie Schindler's List," Rueff said. "That's what I keep going back to whenever things get really tough. I go back and I think about the part toward the end when he looked down at his rings and watches and said, 'I could have done so much more.' I got a roof over my head. I got a ton of things that are such positives. That scene really puts a lot of things in perspective for me."
Most of the children in Rueff's small town of Jeffersonville, Ind., never grew up to become artists. Experiencing culture meant taking a trip to a big city like Chicago, and that was something Rueff's working-class parents couldn't afford.
Rueff was born with his feet turned inward. He wore leg braces through first grade. He was a shy boy who looked up to his older brother, Rusty. When the braces came off, his parents enrolled him in ballet classes to strengthen his legs.
"I've always been a shy person," Rueff said. "When I was kid, I fell off a couch and busted my mouth. So all my front baby teeth were gone when I was learning how to talk. So I had a speech impediment. I also had to go to school with braces on my legs. When I went and saw Forrest Gump with that first scene when he comes out with braces, the opening credits aren't even gone yet and I'm bawling."
Later, in 1974, his father joined his youngest son for a series of swimming lessons. It would be the first time Rueff could remember his dad taking the time to do something just with him.
"I think those swim lessons were a time that was just devoted to me," Rueff said. "It wasn't about anything else. It wasn't about other siblings. It wasn't about mowing the grass. It was time my dad set aside that was just for me, and that feeling is what I'm trying to recreate for Happen."
Football pushed ballet lessons aside permanently once Rueff entered high school. His mother, the school nurse, took him to visit an artist's studio. His father, the school drama teacher, got Rueff and his brother to help build the sets for school plays.
He never forgot a second-grade trip to the local New Albany Floyd County Museum, where he saw a picture of Abraham Lincoln painted as a rainbow. It was proof to Rueff that an artist could do more than just make a pretty picture.
After high school, Rueff left Jeffersonville and earned a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at the University of Evansville. He continued his education at Western Michigan University, where he earned a Masters of Arts.
After college, he moved to Chicago and promptly became an active member of the arts scene. Chicago galleries displayed his work. His art career was becoming established.
A phone call from an old friend, Doug Worple, brought Rueff to Cincinnati to help form Barefoot Advertising in 1995. The business grew quickly -- and then Rueff suddenly sold his share in the company in 1998.
"I wasn't surprised when Tommy left," Worple said. "Happen allows him to combine his career with his art. Now, he can share the passion he has for the art in his life with other people, especially disadvantaged people who normally would not be exposed to it."
The visiting students at his Corryville studio put an idea in his head that he couldn't shake. He remembered his childhood swimming lessons with his father and his ballet classes.
Happen, Rueff knew, would be a reflection of fond memories from his own childhood. By the time of the first classes in 1999, he was confident that Happen was what he'd been meant to do.
Basically, Happen allows Rueff to keep growing. It's clear that he's no longer the shy boy from small-town Indiana.
"It takes a lot to get up there and do those classes and events or anything," Rueff said. "But I really believe in what I'm doing, and I believe that we're making an impact on these families. I think I've changed quite a bit, and it (Happen) has helped me tremendously.
"I feel that I'm reaching full potential in a lot of areas. Creatively, it's such a wonderful outlet for me. I get to do some really great stuff."
Watch the Spinning Goolosh Bowl
The crowds at this year's St. Rita's Fest weren't sure what to make of the larger-than-life Happen production called "Gameshow Goolosh." Kids participated on a color game show set with giant puzzle pieces, a large mural of American Gothic and cut-out cows.
In the middle of the chaos sat a red styrofoam goulash bowl. Oversized vegetables and goop flowed over its side. In the middle sat an adult contestant who, inevitably, was going to get slimed.
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Photo By Michele Howard
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Tommy Rueff leads children from the Project Connect
summer camp at Hays Elementary to install a mural at
a vacant West End lot.
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Gameshow Goolosh is just one of the ways Rueff gets the Happen message out to the general public. He figures the best way he can promote his classes is through positive word of mouth. Unfortunately, it's also the slowest form of marketing.
Although he makes just enough to pay his expenses, Rueff stays busy putting the Happen message out there as often as he can. Happen programs classes for the Mix FM-sponsored days at Coney Island. At last year's World Jam Festival downtown, Happen also sponsored "heseFetasm World," an interactive area for children to explore the world through their senses.
"Tommy is one those rare human beings who puts his life where his mouth is," said Bob Elias, director of Cincinnati Arts Festival Inc., the sponsor of World Jam. "He's inspiring."
At the last Mix event, it was difficult to hear Rueff above the typical Coney Island chaos. A boombox played the familiar Salsa music. Farmer Old McDonald made a guest appearance.
By the end of the class, before the bikini-clad moms dragged their children back to the pool, boxes were fashioned into barns to be placed on the kids' heads and worn as hats. Rueff stood in the center of the crowd wearing his barn-hat for everyone to see. He was proud to look foolish. And he hoped that some of the parents there enjoyed the program enough to sign up for a full series of Happen classes.
"It's hard to build something from nothing," Rueff said, sitting at a Coney Island picnic table. "I'm not so familiar with everything that's going on in Cincinnati, but I haven't found a Happen anywhere. This is something I'm proud of, but it's also frustrating to get the message across."
Class Two: July 13
Children discover the art of drawing lines via disco dancing and relay races. It's a fast and frantic start to the second Happen class.
Later, Rueff leads the teams to a group of balloon-covered easels in the back of the room. It's the perfect opportunity to learn about gesture drawings.
Of course, this means that a trio of female jesters will pop out of a secret door and pose for the Happen teams. And the jesters will need volunteers like Alicia and Aterria Green to pose for the class.
The girls strike their best disco strut. Buckets of paint spill across green aprons. The music blares. Balloons pop. The class ends noisily.
A Mural Is Built in the West End
The Project Connect summer camp is in full swing, and 49 kids are gathered in the gymnasium at Hays Elementary in the West End. It's a warm July morning, and the gym is sweltering. It's up to Tommy Rueff to take their mind off the heat.
Brochures are passed out. A large mural is rolled across the gym floor.
"I want to introduce a special guest today, Robert S. Duncanson," Rueff tells the class. "He passed away a long time ago. He was a self-taught painter. Does anyone know what 'self-taught' means?"
With cups of pencils, pieces of the mural and a rusty metal stepladder, Rueff and the Project Connect kids walk down to a chainlink fence at the corner of Linn and Court streets, where they begin to piece together one of Duncanson's murals. It will stand for almost five days, next to a sign that reads "These premises are the property of CMHA. Trespassers will be arrested and prosecuted according to #2911.21 Ohio Criminal Code."
For this West End neighborhood, the mural is a splash of color in an otherwise drab, vacant lot. But before they head down the street, Rueff has a message to share with the children.
"Repeat after me!," he yells to the crowd. " 'I am creative! I can do anything! I am creative! I can do anything!' You can make it happen, and we're going to make it happen today. Remember, each and every one of you is blessed with creativity."
The Project Connect summer camp keeps the kids busy. When they're not practicing reading skills, they're swimming at the neighborhood pool or going on field trips. It's here that Alicia and Aterria spend their days away from the room they share with their cousins and their grandmother, Elvira Sweeten, at an Over-the-Rhine shelter. Along with their Thursday evening Happen classes, Project Connect offers some much-needed stability to their lives.
"When you're homeless, the kids are with their parents all the time," says Project Connect Director Debbie Reinhart. "Imagine one room for kids and parents, and maybe it's only 10-by-12 feet. But kids are so resilient. It's amazing what they withstand."
Project Connect is designed to help these homeless kids stay afloat with their academic standards. Every activity they do is about enrichment. There are trips to museums, Paramount's Kings Island and the Main Public Library. Lunch and snacks are served. Class instruction, led by teams of college interns, is kept lively and fun.
"So much of the time these kids are labeled," says Laura Knepfle, a 19-year-old theology student from Xavier University. "But they're just kids and they want to have fun."
Every morning, journals are passed out for the students to make their daily entries. Aterria writes about a recent camp trip: "I went on a trip yesterday and the really best thing I liked about it was when we were roasting marshmallows and we put the marshmallows on some chocolate and some graham crackers and we ate it."
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Photo By Michele Howard
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Tommy Rueff leads the cheers at a performance of
Gameshow Goolosh.
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On the following page, she describes a childlike dream beneath her drawing of a mermaid: "I would like to live under the sea because I want to be a mermaid. I like to read all books that are friendly. I want to be a hospital doctor and do surgery on people who need it. I would like to work at the university hospital."
Alicia's diary also speaks about girlish fantasies: "If I was a cowgirl, I would wear a cowgirl hat and cowgirl boots and have a horse. If I had a big birthday party, I would have a lot of balloons on the floor and a blinking light and a glass bowl with a glass spoon with juice and a lot of people."
On the camp's last day, Aterria, Alicia and the other Project Connect kids receive book bags stuffed with school supplies. There's a birthday party in the school gym with balloons, juice and cake.
For Alicia, it's as if her diary wish came true.
Class Three: July 20
Paparazzi wait for the children outside the Happen storefront. Autograph seekers hold up huge photos of the various Happen kids. One sign reads: "Aterria -- You're the Best!"
The make-believe star treatment continues inside, where individual dressing rooms and make-up tables have been built for each team. It's only a matter of time before an old-time Hollywood filmmaker comes out to lead these Happen stars through their scene.
Along the way, they'll learn how movie film works. They'll create their own slapstick movie complete with spraying water bottles. By the end of class, they'll construct a personal flip book.
Suddenly, making movies seems like an attainable dream for anyone, even a pair of young girls from Over-the-Rhine.
Fate Sent Me
It's 8:30 a.m. at Sugar and Spice Restaurant in Bond Hill, and Rueff has already been to work at the Happen offices. He sent out mail and made a phone call to Daniel Epstein, a key volunteer who helped him form Happen's original business plan.
Happen runs on a corps of dedicated volunteers, people like Chris Sickles, Todd Jessee and Lisa Wolter. They're the characters and staff that turn every class into interactive theater, and Rueff knows that Happen couldn't exist without them.
Still, working exclusively with volunteers means that every workday becomes a two-shift day. Basically, Rueff has to schedule his meetings after his volunteers get off work. Days often don't finish until close to midnight. It's a good thing that Rueff is too in love with his job to complain.
When he was 24, Rueff says he felt there was something big planned for his life. He remembers going to the movies with friends and asking if they felt the same way.
"My friends looked at me and said, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' " Rueff says, laughing. "They thought I was crazy. It's tough to get people to believe in your dreams. I got this idea, and it was very hard to convince people to get behind me."
In Rueff's mind, a bear jumps from behind a wall to chase a caveman, aliens pass out special meteorites to kids and a black-and-white cowpoke named Cowboy Value stops by to tell the Happen kids about the light and dark values in colors.
Remember the James Thurber story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty? Well, Happen is the result of Rueff's own unique sense of make-believe and childlike sense of wonder. Every class is an exercise in fantasy.
Brochures and mission statements discuss where Happen wants to be in five years. But Rueff's own childlike enthusiasm describes the program best.
"Number one, it's a bonding time," he said. "It's an hour and a half where that child is empowered by either a parent or a mentor or another adult and where that child knows this whole thing is about them. And the way we do it is by providing art education, art awareness and practicing the basic art skills. But that's number two. If they walk away with more art awareness, well, that's great.
"You know how we clap all the time? When my mom was a school nurse where I went to school, in the morning I would always have to go to work with her early before everyone else got there. When it would rain, I'd walk into the gymnasium and it would sound like applause. You could be anything you wanted to be there, but you were like the star. So you could land on the moon one day. You could hit the last jumper.
"If a child knocks a big can of paint off their desks, well, that's the best one we've seen. They can't do anything wrong for that hour and a half."
Happen is only a year and a half old. There's no financial track record. There's a long way to go before the program becomes stable.
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Photo By Michele Howard
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Duan Lattimore, Rueff, Alicia and Alterrria Green at
Happen graduation ceremonies.
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But more people are starting to hear about Happen. There's been recognition from the Post-Corbett Awards and Cincinnati Magazine. The Fine Arts Fund has provided funding support. Rueff's hope is that Happen won't be one of Cincinnati's best-kept secrets much longer.
Class Four: July 27
Big hair reigns supreme at the Happen version of Wigstock. Everyone wears a colorful wig this day.
The catwalk begins at the back of the room. While Madonna's "Vogue" plays over the boombox, each Happen student shows off their wig like some supermodel. It's all Wig-Out-on-Color fun and games until the Big Wig makes her appearance, a portly judge who demands that there's order in the court. The Big Wig also is the emcee for a game show involving color trivia.
"Who blew the horn?," she asks one student. Of course the answer is Little Boy Blue. "Red is the color of what sports team in Cincinnati?"
A right answer earns each student a prize that the Big Wig pulls straight out of her tower of white hair. Once her wig is empty of prizes, everyone gets down on their hands and knees for a game of Twister. It's a body-bending way to learn about primary and secondary colors.
Not Everything Goes Happen's Way
A July fundraiser at Brighton Corner's Embryo Gallery failed to raise enough money to buy even one Happen scholarship for a Project Connect kid. In hindsight, Rueff realizes that one postcard announcement at the beginning of the summer isn't enough publicity.
Last year, Happen sponsored the Flamingo Caper, a sale of painted yard flamingos. Most of the flamingos remain unsold in Rueff's backyard.
Still, all Rueff can do is keep plugging away. There are seven Happen class sessions every year, and each class offers spots for Project Connect kids. At the final class, he knows that all the effort is worth it, whether or not the fundraisers are successful.
"At graduation, all the kids come up and we bring out the cake," he said. "Right before the cake, I say I know that they are very special and I hope that they know they're very special, but there's someone else in this room that thinks they're very special and that's the reason why you're here. I ask them to go and thank them. They all go back and give them big hugs.
"One time I looked up and this mother was just bawling. I mean, she felt it. It was a wonderful experience."
Graduation Class: Aug. 3
A cavewoman tries to communicate with the class. Her efforts are thwarted by a giant bear who chases her outside.
Before the climactic cake, juice and pizza party, most of the class features the teams working on a giant storyboard. By now, the Salsa music in the background has become familiar.
Aterria Green stays busy, drawing her story with crayons: "There once was a fireman who lived in a hat. One day the fireman found a ring and gave it to a monkey and turned it into a ton of bananas that helped the entire city of happen... The city of happen was so happy that they made the monkey and fireman the king of all fruit and they all lived happily ever after."
After the final cheer, Rueff drives Alicia, Aterria and a Happen student named Duane back to Over-the-Rhine. They play games like Marco Polo and talk about the highs and lows of their week.
"Why can't we come next Thursday?," Alicia asks Rueff. "Why can't we come one more time?"
Aterria points to a cloud shaped like an elephant. Duane talks about the basketball camp he's been attending. In the distance, around the curve of the Ohio River, Cincinnati's downtown towers rise in the distance. Aterria stares at the trees that line Columbia Parkway. It's a nice change of pace from Over-the-Rhine's gritty streets.
Alicia and Aterria are normally quiet about their personal life, but this final trip is a special exception. Their grandma has just secured an apartment in Avondale. They move out of the shelter in a couple of days.
Getting their own home had nothing to do with Happen. Still, traveling along the Ohio River, it felt like Happen made all the difference in the world.
Warehouse Ruminations
Inside a Waverly Avenue warehouse, overlooking the trains and smokestacks that fill Camp Washington's industrial landscape, Rueff rummages through the sets and supplies that comprise Gameshow Goolosh and heseFetasm World.
The summer Happen classes are over, but he's as busy as ever. He needs to finish designs for the new heseFetasm setup for this fall's World Jam. He's planning for the fall Happen classes to begin in early September. He also needs to build some walls on the opposite floor of this one-vibrant factory. The result will be a private studio and darkroom.
Rueff wants to get back to his own artwork. There's interest from some out-of-town galleries to schedule a solo show of his work. He's not sure if that's something he can afford to turn down.
Between the work, Rueff travels to Louisville to see his girlfriend. He's known her for 19 years, and they've been seeing each other for two and a half years.
Rueff knows he wants to get married and have a family. But those are plans that will have to wait until Happen gets financially stronger. He's confident it will eventually occur.
"I went into Happen seeing this as my last job," he said. "I also think that five years down the road, I'll be able to step back and a have a regular schedule and raise a family.
"I want Happen to be stable without me. I want it to be less about Tommy and more about Happen. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I want to know to that some someone will come and be able to teach the classes."
Atop assorted junk and supplies, Rueff's eyes focus on the artwork that started it all. Next to a pile of old typewriters sits one of the black-and-white photographs of his dog he gave to a student who visited his studio three years ago. The child had sketched the dog into a grassy field, the place where Tommy's dog needed to be.
The same photograph continues to have a similar message for Tommy Rueff. Three years after that studio visit, he's where he needs to be. ©
