Gary Bowling’s House of Art is a draw for artists in the area— like photographer Jamie Webb, whose main model is The Grand Lady Ramsey Herself. There’s Brian Aliff, nationally recognized for his handcrafted and painted turkey calls. You won’t find one at the House of Art, though, because every one he makes is sold before it’s finished. There’s Isaac Preston, who sculpts using salvaged wire, and Jody Queen, a graphite artist and professional kayak angler and the House of Art’s vice president. And then there’s Chris DeHart, the House of Art’s resident hobgoblin. He’s a prosthetic makeup artist and role-playing game developer for Pure Steam, an alternate history role-playing game set in the Bluefield region. He fell in with Bowling because he’s a junk artist, too. He gives broken things new life in the form of steampunk armor and weaponry. In 2018, he won Best in Show at Gen Con—North America’s largest tabletop-game convention— for his work in prosthetics, costuming, and prop-making. And like the junk artist he is, he never trashes a prosthetic. You can find his reclaimed pieces—like Harpy, a life-size winged mutant with 100 horns—on display in the House of Art’s Eldritch Library. Like DeHart, McDowell County native Jamie Powers grew up on horror movies and comic books. He earned his Bachelor of
Fine Arts in illustration fromThe Columbus College of Art & Design before returning to West Virginia. “I don’t think I would have been the same person or the same artist if I hadn’t gone back to West Virginia,” he says. After witnessing the devastation of extractive industries, he picked up a paintbrush. The environmental landscapes he paints are inhabited by monsters like the wendigo, representing nature’s wrath. He credits Bowling for helping him find his voice as an artist, and you can find his mixed- media paintings on display at the House of Art. OneThin Dime Perhaps most unique to Gary Bowling’s House of Art is the One Thin Dime Museum, an ode to Bluefield, its people, and their past. The museum is single-handedly sponsored by self-proclaimed amateur historian and collector John Velke, who bought the Elks Lodge in downtown Bluefield just to own its archives. Those archives, along with Elks initiation devices, can be found at the One Thin Dime Museum. The museum is housed in the basement of The Ramsey.
Gary Bowling’s House of Art has occupied four buildings over the past decade; it’s finally found its home on Ramsey Street in Bluefield.
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