Tucked away in a cabinet in my bedroom are two small clay sculptures of musicians, one playing a cello and the other a brass horn. On the bottom is written “Ricky Flinn, 1959”, which tells me I made them when I was 12 years old. My mother kept them because they won a prize and were on display for the duration of my time at Spring Street Elementary School in Atlanta Somewhere in a trunk in the attic there are paintings and other sculptures that predate those musicians, reminding me that the urge to create has been with me from the beginning. Making something that didn’t exist until my imagination and hands got busy has always made me happy. If I can make something beautiful or meaningful or simply useful, all the better.
My passion for the arts landed me my first job at age 16 as apprentice to an art conservationist and dealer. He taught me to restore paintings and antique frames, and influenced my decision to major in visual arts in college. I first intended to major in sculpture, but ended up focussing on wearable sculpture with a bachelor’s degree in jewelry design and gold smithing. I also completed most of the credits for a masters in photography, but when all of my cameras were stolen, I decided I’d had enough university and went to India for a month of spiritual introspection, a sort of pilgrimage that I repeated 13 times over the next 20 years. Between sojourns in India, back in Atlanta I went to work making jewelry until a downturn in the economy made other revenue streams a necessity. I took a job with an interior design firm, channeling my creative energies in a new direction, and heading back to school to take courses in design and architecture. After a few years I was asked to manage the art gallery where I first worked at age 16, overseeing art purchases and sales, restoration and framing. The opportunities to create my own work were temporarily subsumed by the demands of an active business, but I still designed the occasional piece of jewelry, made paintings, took photos, and stayed active as an interior designer.
Then in 1976, a new opportunity landed in my lap and an exciting new chapter began. I volunteered to help the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, which had narrowly escaped demolition the year before. The new owner, Atlanta Landmarks, was struggling to make mortgage payments. One missed payment, and the building would have been destroyed to make way for a parking lot for the new headquarters of Bell South. Because of my skills in restoration and design, I was asked to revive a derelict meeting room in the theater so it could be rented out for private functions. The manager liked my ideas, and offered me the position of Director of Restoration. At the same time, the owners of the art gallery offered to sell me the business, so the pressure was on. The opportunity to restore the Fabulous Fox was too tempting to refuse, and so a 16 year project began. It was an intense challenge, but I still managed to create my own art, and to take on private design projects in the rare moments of free time.
A few years into the restoration of the Fox Theatre, the onset of a mysterious and deadly epidemic cast a troubling shadow. My partner was the first physician in Atlanta to report cases to the CDC of a strange new virus affecting some of his patients. It was a few years and many more deaths before that disease was identified and named, and 15 years before effective treatments emerged to stop the gruesome progression of AIDS. To cope with the grief and loss of those years, as well as the enormous pressure of the very complicated restoration of the Fox, my art was a lifesaving escape.
When a friend invited me to attend sculpture classes with live models in his studio, I found my ideal therapy. I could channel my emotions into the clay, and somehow the process of creating my interpretations of healthy bodies counteracted the trauma of seeing the destruction of actual bodies. The darkest years of HIV mercifully ended, revisited now by the more universal threat of the Coronavirus, and I am still finding refuge in the creative process through sculpture, painting, photography and design.
Another creative response I had to the AIDS epidemic was to become a sperm donor. I didn’t expect to have children of my own, so being the anonymous contributor to the creation of a child in someone else’s family felt like a positive, life affirming thing to do. Years later, with the development of DNA testing, and with dramatic consequences, my role as genetic contributor was no longer anonymous. With a match on a DNA website, I suddenly found myself a father and grandfather. But that’s another, very happy story.