25 years of the Avant Garde and Kitsch at Doubting Thomas
“The mind of the man [sic] who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent… fly faster, love to your heart’s content. And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead?” – André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism, 1924
Doubting Thomas Gallery turned 25 in October, and, as with the “Pat’s in the Flats” exhibition of last month, the space was again the site for an artist-punk reunion. Founded in 2000 by pediatrician Dr. Theresa Boyd (Dr. Theresa) Doubting Thomas Gallery serves as community-focused space for art, poetry, and performance. The gallery is known for its counter-cultural cred and communal atmosphere, and the opening on November 14 provided gallery-goers the opportunity to celebrate the space and the artists that make it a place of experimentation, political/social critique, beauty and satire, as well as the freaks, geeks, and creatives who are no longer with us.
The last exhibition reminded the community how much Pat’s in the Flats influenced two generations of scrappy artists-musicians and live music lovers. Curated by frequent DT collaborator Shawn Mishak, The Doubting Thomas Gallery 25th anniversary exhibition shows us that there are still spaces for those seeking that which is avant-garde, kitsch-clever, and irreverent.
The punk spirit of destruction, of creating something imperfect and putting it out in the world as a raw unfinished experiment, challenges social norms and rules.[1] This is part of what keeps bringing artists and community members to Doubting Thomas. And, while the subjects of artworks may be about serious issues, Dr. Theresa and the community around the space do not strive to be taken seriously, as doing so, could mean, as Jack Halberstam tells us in his 2011 book, The Queer Art of Failure “missing out on the chance to be frivolous [and] promiscuous.”
The gallery eschews notions of “seriousness” and “rigor,” which, Halberstam writes, “tend to be code… in academia… for disciplinary correctness; they signal a form of training and learning that confirms what is already known according to approved methods of knowing…[but] do not allow for visionary insights or flights of fancy.”[2]
Joanie Deveney, a.k.a. Joan Of Art, is a longtime collaborator at Doubting Thomas, beginning in the gallery’s earliest days. “My first knowledge of the new space was in early 2000 when a friend Mark Hopkins (now deceased) asked me to join him, Dr. Theresa, Ann Cantilon, and my friend Robert Ritchie (also deceased) for [the first exhibition].” She was otherwise committed at the time but took an afternoon to gather the crew for a photograph. Deveney knew something important was afoot, and taking a portrait was a way to connect with them, to still be involved.
“I hadn’t met Dr. Theresa nor Ann at the time, but the show I first participated in was Ann’s ‘THE HORROR OF BEING’,” a [shadowy] themed exhibition,” she says. “I had an installation piece that was a mini parking lot with a reconfigured handicap tag placed on old leg braces from the 1940s. I ‘parked’ the braces in the handicapped section with a tag that had a smiley face [in lieu of the standard person on wheelchair in profile], conveying, ‘Well, at least there’s one advantage to being disabled.’ We don’t normally connect smiley faces to disability in this context,” she explains, “It was odd, and went with the theme.”
In 2001, Deveney recalls, Hopkins created a committee to pursue an idea he had for an installation, “WALK ACROSS AMERICA.” “I was part of that committee, [we wrote letters] to [various art museums, universities, and] libraries in every state asking for soil… and we got a ton of [it]: sand, lava, rust, to name a few.” They subsequently compiled all the earthen materials in the center of the front gallery in the shape of the United States, and “people could WALK ACROSS AMERICA!,” she remembers.
“For that show I made an outdoor installation in the front tree lawn area, which included a mini white picket fence, and I installed an abandoned fire hydrant. After installation the cops came by and gave the back tenant a parking ticket [for blocking hydrant access], she bemusedly recalls. “The tenant screamed at cops, saying ‘It’s only art!’ as the cops shook their heads and chuckled, saying, ‘What is the chief going to say?’.”
Dr. Theresa also fondly remembers the intense feeling of community that she witnessed on that Tremont Art Walk evening. “Along with the outlined shape of the US, the gallery was filled with patriotic art and music. We had people packing the sidewalks and obstructing traffic on Jefferson Avenue. It was really something,” she recalls.
Along with the community spirit, the political discourse, there’s the art and the cast of artist-characters who’ve regularly exhibited and curated at the gallery—even before it became Doubting Thomas in 2000.[3] Dr. Theresa recently told CAN Journal’s Michael Gill, “Over the years we have shown hundreds of people’s work. All local, all the time. We insist on some Cleveland connection.”[4]
Hence, the opening of the 25th anniversary show and the reunion vibes. Shawn Mishak, who’s curated numerous exhibitions at the space over it’s quarter of a century existence, notes, “A lot of the early crew was here, as well as the artists who’ve shown up for more than two decades,” he laughs, at catching “Douglas Utter standing near his portrait [of a young person with a medical test device wrapped about his head, eyes blurry, lips full] in the black light section of the exhibition, chatting it up like it was 2004 with artist-designer Doug Meyer.”
Both “Dougs” contribute compelling works, and another sweet reality of Doubting Thomas is just how much the artists around the gallery bought, traded, and collected one another’s art. Utter’s piece is owned by painter and Doubting Thomas regular, Norbert Ziebold (Norb), whose large-scale painting is a centerpiece of the front gallery space. Norbert’s “Ticks,” which he identified on the label as, “A colorful poem about my cancer for you!” is comprised of the text-poem on a blood-red colored gorilla-like creature. While he addresses a serious topic—his own cancer treatment, the bright yellow and calm, blue-striped field on which the poem and beast are rendered, appear carnivalesque, as if his illness and day-to-day reality are just one more spectacle in the daily barrage of suffering. Here, his “bad news,” becomes poetry read by a chimp-chump, who’s just trying to get by.
Doug Meyer’s large-scale, slick white gyroscope sculpture interacts well with other movement-based works in the show, namely Ed Rafael’s phallic piece, which consists of a base with a blue target on it. At the center, a four-foot-long pink balloon inflates and deflates every three minutes. Rafael explains the intricacies of the piece, as he’s loading a new balloon in advance of the opening reception. “I try to turn it off occasionally to give it a ‘rest’, as each balloon only lasts about 40 minutes and installing a new one is quite the process.” He speaks with experience; this is not the first time he’s shown the dynamic sculpture at Doubting Thomas.
Terrie Gerard’s, “Maria,” is stunning paint-in-motion, as she captures the energy and essence of her subject, a lanky white woman with bright red lips, smeared (flawed, but nonetheless, stunning), her dark eyes hollow. Maria leans on pointy elbows, which rest on a burnt umber colored table that melts under her. Gerard is known for making unsettling figurative paintings with unexpected colors, which can be beautifully nauseating, and “Maria” is one such work. This artist is a master at evoking complicated emotions and the frailty of the human condition; we need more of it at this moment in History.
The black light section of the anniversary exhibition pays homage to the black light-themed shows mounted over the course of the gallery’s 25 years. Standouts (along with Doug Utter’s painting), include an electrifying, two-dimension-defying collage, “Fiddelsticks,” by John Saile, and Nicholas Deveney’s sex-spectacular portrait of Stormy Daniels, which manages to be both utterly sexy, yet clown-like. The latter piece honors the beauty and power of Daniels, in the aftermath of her 2018 challenge to president #45 (now, #47), who is again under scrutiny for sexual dalliances, this time with teenagers.[5]
Too, there are passages of the Doubting Thomas 25th Anniversary exhibition where Breton’s quote feels particularly apt, as with the inclusion of Robert Ritchie’s work. Ritchie, a visual artist and creator of the comic/character Dickhead, was a punk musician, and early (beautifully failed) gallerist-gadfly who lived and worked in Tremont long before it was gentrified and home to one-named restaurants: And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead?
Resistance, resilience, and chance are underpinnings of Doubting Thomas and this sense pervades the current exhibition of bright art-stars, living and dead.
Doubting Thomas Gallery 25th Anniversary Exhibition
On view through December 6, 2025
Talk with Artists December 4 from 6-9 p.m.
Hours: Saturdays, 12noon to 4 p.m.
By appointment (Mishakshawn@gmail.com)
856 Jefferson Avenue
Cleveland, OH
[1] This ethos is not new. In 1929, Mihkail Bakhtin called for dismantling/destroying monolithic, absolute systems and processes in order do find genuine creativity. (See The Problems of Dostoevsky’s Creative Art, originally published in Leningrad, 1929.)
[2] Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 6.
[3]For a more expansive overview of the history of Doubting Thomas, see Michael Gill, “Expect Miracles: Doubting Thomas Endures,”https://canjournal.org/expect-miracles-doubting-thomas-endures/ (accessed November 20, 2025).
[4]Ibid.
[5] “The abuse was real,’ Epstein survivor implores Trump, who again calls case a ‘hoax’,” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-the-abuse-was-real-epstein-survivor-implores-trump-who-again-calls-case-a-hoax, September 23, 2025 (accessed November 21, 2025).
You must be logged in to post a comment.