Against all odds, taking no commissions, and without a website, set hours, or staff, doubting thomas art and free verse space is almost a quarter century old.

No commission. No website. No set hours, and no staff to keep them. Artists on the edge of homelessness sometimes sleeping on the church pew. “Expect miracles” has become a mantra for the circle of friends who keep doubting thomas art and free verse space running. In light of the way it operates, the mere existence of such an art gallery defies logic, and the fact that it will mark 25 years in Summer 2025 is something of a miracle. Yet after decades of gentrification, climbing real estate prices, an ever-changing cast of characters and an influx of new residents in the neighborhood, doubting thomas endures as a slice of old Tremont, dedicated to providing artists with space to do their thing.

All it takes to produce a show there is to convince Dr. Theresa Boyd—the de facto director, who refers to herself as the one who pays the rent—that you are committed and will open the doors on time for the neighborhood’s monthly, second Friday gallery walk. Exhibitors get the place as-is—one room with walls of bare, mismatched lath, others coated with layer upon layer of paint, and an accumulation of dust on the meager few track-light fixtures. Any artist who wants to promote with a postcard has to print it themself. Dr. Theresa lost access to the Facebook page she used for the venue, and so anyone who wants a social media event to link has to create that too. Yet accomplished veterans exhibit in the same venue and often right next to people showing art for the first time. The result is the most gloriously rudderless and inconsistent art space in the city. High concept and finely crafted work sometimes mingle and sometimes take turns with whatever the opposite of that is. The potential for surprise is rather high.

Until the recent announcement that Kaiser Gallery would reopen and rebrand, doubting thomas seemed destined to become the last regularly exhibiting gallery in Tremont. It’s a reminder of the neighborhood’s halcyon days, when artists moved there in numbers because rent was so low, and tolerance for shenanigans was so high.

The key to the gallery’s longevity is Dr. Theresa Boyd, a pediatrician in private practice, serving a neighborhood on the southeast side of Cleveland for several decades. She’s been there from the beginning.

“It started off with four of us—myself, Robert Ritchie, Ann Cantillon, and Mark Hopkins. Two of us liked art—myself and Robert—and two liked poetry and literature—Anne and Mark. Mark was looking for a different place to live, and Robert was looking for a place to show his art again in Tremont. He had previously showed a lot, but he was a punk and had burned a lot of bridges with art gallery owners. So he needed a place where he could sell his art, and Mark needed a place to live where he could bring home a date and have a place of his own.

“Josh Banaszak had initially started a gallery in the front part of the house, called The State of Ohio. When he was moving out, Annie said it was a great opportunity because Robert could show his art, and they could have art shows and poetry readings, and Mark could use the upstairs as his apartment, and it would only cost $300 a month. But I was the only one with a job who could sign a lease. So we started doubting thomas art and free verse space.” That was September 2000, Dr. Theresa says. Joanie Deveney soon joined as a collaborator. “The rest is history,” Boyd says. “We kept having art shows. One by one everyone dropped out and left me holding the bag as payer of the rent. I just kept up paying the rent.”

Musician and curator Shawn Mishak also got involved early, in 2000. The first show he pitched to Dr. Theresa was called SOS: Save Our Steel—a photo exhibit occasioned by the impending closure of a steel mill. He brought youthful enthusiasm and began writing press releases and helping out in other ways. He moved to Tremont a year later, and has organized shows there ever since.

Especially in the early years, doubting thomas was home to a lot of conceptual experimentation, often in thematic group shows. On December 8, 2000, Hopkins marked the twentieth anniversary of John Lennon’s death (to the day) with a show in his honor. Dr. Theresa recalls a guy dressed as John, and a girl dressed as Yoko. The guy played guitar and led visitors in a sit-in, and in singing “Give Peace a Chance.” All the art on the walls was about John Lennon and the Beatles. A TV news crew showed up to report on the event.

In 2001, Hopkins conceived one of the most memorable shows—The Walk Across America. Before social media was commonplace, he and collaborators wrote snail-mail letters to spread the word among out-of-town friends, vacationers, and galleries that he was seeking dirt from each of the fifty states. All the dirt was combined and spread within the outline of a map of the US on the floor. Visitors were invited to “walk across America.” Dr. Theresa recalls that organizing and gathering all the dirt was a huge group effort. This is the show that everyone interviewed for this story remembered.

Joanie Deveney’s first show there came in the early months—a glass show with Robert Richie and another artist she can’t recall. She became a regular and has stayed involved through the years, including a long run of Stupid Cupid Valentine’s Day group shows in February. One of those featured the “Sani Kiss” booth—a kissing booth window, staffed by Deveney, wherein she offered kisses, but at the last second would slide a plastic baggie between her and the customer’s lips, kissing through that like a dental dam—a marriage of performance art and sex ed.

After the September 11 attacks, Jacci Hammer—another regular—curated a show in response, on November 11, called 911 on 11-9. “I used 150 popcorn boxes and several air poppers to create a popcorn fountain that eventually covered the entire floor with popcorn,” Hammer said. The popcorn symbolized the debris. Thirty artists were involved.

“That brought rats,” Dr. Theresa recalls. “The gallery smelled like popcorn, and we almost lost our lease.”

Over the years, the circle of people and the gallery itself have evolved. Robert Ritchie passed away in 2011. In the headline of his obituary, Cleveland dot com described him as a “loveable trainwreck.” Mark Hopkins passed away in May 2024. Various people drifted in and out of the doubting thomas orbit.

For Joanie Deveney, it has become a family affair. Her sister Laureen has for years created an ever-evolving sculptural installation on the front of the building, featuring large dolls she found on the curb in Collinwood. In October 2024, the dolls were riding surf boards. All of Joan Deveney’s children have exhibited at doubting thomas through the years. Her daughter Jessica was the youngest participant, contributing to a show of women’s art when she was four years old. Her daughter Nora has also exhibited there. Recently her son Nicholas Deveney and his wife Solita have been exhibiting their own work and curating shows, including in January and February 2025. In February, Joanie Deveney will work with Nicholas and Solita on a new iteration of Stupid Cupid.

Joanie Deveney’s own participatory booth performances have become staples of the venue. For one of Mishak’s shows based on the classical elements—The Air Show—she offered two pieces. One was a booth, where she gave “free blow jobs.” They were balloons. For the other performance, she distributed free plastic police whistles, with the intent of calling attention to air pollution. Each whistle had a little card offering directions to blow the whistle at 9 pm, “No matter where you are!!!” The result—about a dozen people blowing police whistles all at once in a small Tremont room—was one of the most horrible experiences a person could ever have in a gallery. Immediately afterward, it was business as usual.

Over the years, doubting thomas developed a habit of poking fun at other, more mainstream venues. When acclaimed photographer Herb Ascherman produced a portrait series of 100 Cleveland artists (including Joanie Deveney) and exhibited them at the venerable and comparatively highbrow Bonfoey Gallery, doubting thomas followed with Oh Phooey—a photo portraiture exhibit, riffing on Ascherman’s style and featuring Cleveland artists who were not a part of the Bonfoey show. One was a portrait of Robert Ritchey, his face framed in a toilet seat. More recently, Deveney needled CAN Triennial 2018 by organizing the We CAN Exhibit, featuring artists who had been rejected from the regional triennial.

In 2009, the BAK graffiti crew organized by Crik and Mo Funk painted the entire gallery, floor to ceiling, covering the walls with aerosol style. But before painting, they had hung framed canvases and panels throughout. The canvases were covered in aerosol lines and became salable fragments of the exhibition. Crik recalls that the show was up for just three days, but that the opening featured a DJ and turned into a rave. “People were there until 6 am. I left and came back, and there were people still there,” he recalls. The gallery was completely painted white afterward, except for a single door in the middle room, which endures as evidence.

In 2012, John Saile curated the first-ever Day-Glo show, with the Cleveland-based corporation providing all the paint. It continued for several years before moving to Waterloo Arts in 2015.

Some of the region’s best-known artists have shown regularly at doubting thomas through the years. Dr. Theresa recalls that the first group show, in October of 2000, featured Ed Raffel, George Kocar, and Robert Richie. Douglas Max Utter, Jeff Chiplis, Liz Maugans, Arabella Proffer, Justin Brennan, John Saile, Stephen Calhoun, Katy Richards, and Dana Depew have all been occasional participants in group shows.

Due to a lack of steady curation or any record keeping, it would be difficult to develop a list of the shows that have been presented in the gallery’s 25 years, and impossible to gather the names of all the artists who have shown there. “Over the years,” Dr. Theresa says, “we have shown hundreds of people’s work. All local, all the time. We insist on some Cleveland connection.”

She says apart from the months off due to COVID-19, the gallery only missed one art walk, and that was due to a water problem. “The upstairs tenant didn’t get the gas turned on, so there was no heat, and a water pipe froze and burst. There was like a foot of standing water. That was the only time that we weren’t open for an art walk.”

After 25 years, with an entire year off for COVID, that would make 288 art walks. Some shows have run two months, but not nearly all of them. So it’s been somewhere between 144 and 288 different shows. It’s a pace most galleries that have paid staff could not maintain.

In addition to Dr. Theresa’s tenacity in paying the rent, doubting thomas is made possible by a generous landlord. We’re not naming him because he likes to keep a low profile at this stage, but he commented clearly about his interest in the gallery. “Keeping the rent at an old-school Tremont price is the least I can do to help the art community who has contributed so much, giving the neighborhood part of its identity,” he said. “[That’s not] simply for the sake of the gallery, but for the neighborhood itself. I’ve invested 45 years of my life in Tremont. I feel that it is important to make sure that there is a venue that allows for a wide range of thought and creativity. Things that can help maintain a sense of creative self in the Tremont neighborhood.”

He adds, “if I dared to do anything that put the gallery at risk, I would never hear the end of it from some of my longest-term friends.”

Here’s hoping that enables a long future for this unique and unlikely venue to continue as a platform for the region’s artists, and the last vestige of Tremont’s halcyon days.

Upcoming at doubting thomas art and free verse space:

December 13: Contemporary Savages: The Art of the Nude, curated by James Michael Owens
January 10, 2025: Theme TBA, curated by Nicholas Deveney and Solita Deveney
February 14, 2025: Stupid Cupid, curated by Nicholas Deveney and Solita Deveney, with Joan (of Art) Deveney
March 14, 2025: Open. To pitch a show, visit doubting thomas during Walkabout Tremont, and ask for Dr. Theresa.