Summary: Claude Ruston Baker has been hired to create works of art all over the world, but the piece that's closest to his heart is the one that's closest to his home.
Story: If there's one thing Millersburg native Claude Ruston Baker knows how to do, it's make a scene. Whether it's within the halls of West Holmes Schools or in a hotel perched on a mountain in Salzburg, Austria, the Killbuck-born self-taught artist can take a blank, dreary block wall and transform it into a thing of beauty with one of his amazing murals.
But Baker's work hasn't always been so public. As a matter of fact, the earliest memory he holds of creating art was in 1963, back when he was supposed to be sitting obediently in a kindergarten classroom learning to spell.
"I went to school on the first day and didn't like the teacher telling me my name was Claude when everyone had always called me Rusty, so the next day, I skipped school and hid in the closet."
While there, the boy made his mark. All over the closet walls, he drew abstract pictures and scribbled his name--"Rusty--over and over.
"I can still remember doing it," laughed Baker. "Picasso would have been impressed with what I did."
Baker's parents, however, weren't very impressed and made sure he marched back to kindergarten the next day. But the Bakers probably weren't surprised by their son's artistic bent. After all, artistic ability ran in the family. Baker's uncle, Millersburg native John Height, is also a self-taught artist whose murals currently appear in thousands of hospitals internationally. Height founded The Foundation for Hospital Art, Inc, a non-profit organization whose mission is to give comfort and hope to patients, families, medical staffs, and visitors by providing artwork to care facilities around the world. Some of Height's talent must have rubbed off on young Rusty.
By high school, Baker found his artistic talents paying off. During study hall, desperate fellow students would pay him fifty cents to whip up their extra credit drawings, saving them from failing their classes.
"I could finish a drawing in under twenty minutes, and that bought my lunch every day," Baker joked.
And while the money was nice, what Baker really longed for was recognition of his talent. Growing up as the youngest of a half-dozen brothers who, as Baker said, were overflowing with testosterone, encouragement for his creativity wasn't always easy to come by.
"My parents had six boys by the time they were 26. They were great parents, but they didn't have time to be everywhere at once." And while his older brothers weren't always supportive of his art, when they did recognize his interests, it meant the world to him. As a high school freshman, Baker's brother Bill gave him an art set. That's when the artist in Rusty Baker really began to emerge.
"He recognized my art, and I started doing large paintings after that."
Then, in 1984, Baker said a man came to Killbuck to build apartment complexes and heard about Baker's abilities.
"He asked if I'd do a mural on his apartment building in southern Ohio. I was 24 or 25 at the time, and this guy offered me a paying job to come do a piece of work."
The piece was a mural commemorating 200 years of Morgan County's history which Baker helped research. The mural remains today, and Baker credits it as the first job that proved to him he could be successful at doing what he loved.
Now Baker's paintings can be seen all around Europe, and in just about every small town in Ohio, especially in cities along the Ohio River. And while the indoor and outdoor murals in more than 170 cities have kept him busy, his most lucrative and successful work often goes completely unnoticed. As a matter of fact, if Baker does those jobs well, they're practically invisible.
"I'm the cosmetic surgeon of construction," laughed Baker, referring to how he gives new life to old brick or new block buildings. Baker calls it architectural illusion. And while he might spend a hundred hours painstakingly hand-painting each brick and artistically aging stone headers, his success is measured by its ability to make the average person think it's just another structure. The unsuspecting passerby might never notice that the handsome aged copper awning is actually rust-stained metal, or that the gorgeous brick wall is actually made of cement block.
But perhaps the piece of work that has given Baker the most joy has been the new coat of paint he gave his own barn back in 2005.
"It was the heat of summer, and it was time to paint the barn," said Baker. "I thought I'd just do a portrait on the side." By the end of the day, Baker had painted a larger-than-life likeness of The Beatles on his 60x60 late 1800's barn along county road 150.
"Within two weeks," recalled Baker,"a guy from Egham, England had sent me a picture of me painting the barn. He had just happened to be driving by as I was doing it."
Since then, Baker has added the portraits of two dozen musicians to the barn, ranging from Beethoven to Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd to Dolly Parton. He's always happy when someone happens his way.
"For some reason, a lot of GPS navigators send folks along this road when they're heading from Coshocton to Millersburg. I love it when a car goes past, I see their brake lights, and they slowly back up so they can get a closer look." On weekends, said Baker, travelers come from all over, filling his driveway with visitors who tell him how much they appreciate his creativity.
Last year, Baker said, a young Asian girl approached him with her camera, requesting permission to take some photos. Baker found out that the girl was from the University of Japan. Her professor had given her a list of things to shoot in America, and Baker's barn was one of them.
It's recognition like that, Baker said, that makes every day he lives and paints the best day of his life.
"I love what I do," said Baker.
And based on the number of visitors who make the journey to snap a photo of Elvis or Johnny Cash on the side of a big old barn in Holmes County, a lot of other people love it, too.
