I want to present a little background regarding my brother’s life. This snapshot will, I hope be interesting and enlightening to those who were not intimately familiar with Jim.

James Lee Cunningham was born in Bloomington, Indiana on the Autumnal Equinox, September 21th, 1948. Our father, Gene Clayton Cunningham, was finishing medical school at Indiana University. Jim’s sister Donna was 18 months old at that time. His siblings to follow were born: Thomas Roy 3/1951, Jonathan Allen 5/1953 ) Indianapolis, Indiana), and Kimberly Ruth 6/1958 (Tampa, Florida). Our mother’s maiden name was Ruth Bertha Liminski. Born of Lithuanian descent she was beautiful and a talented singer. She was studying opera when she joined the Coast Guard with the start of WWII.

As kids I recall my father not being around much, especially with internship and after when practicing medicine. We moved to Tampa Florida in 1953 where my father joined a practice with a fellow medical student friend. Jim was the oldest of us boys and so very inventive. For example: our mother was in the hospital several times with miscarriages and for the birth of our little sister. The maid who took care of us at those times didn’t like us boys (we often picked on our older sister) and often would lock us out of the house to separate us from Donna and as punishment. Once under Jim’s leadership we brothers found an access point to the attic above the washing machine in our garage. We climbed up and crawled along the rafters until we got to where we thought our bedroom was and crashed in through the ceiling. The maid became hysterical and called our father who came home from a busy clinic schedule. He assured us in harsh terms that we were not exercising a beneficial application of creativity. We moved back to Indianapolis in 1958 when my father took a job with Eli Lilly.

As a preteen Jim simultaneously became interested in art and science. He took the John Nage home drawing course and loved it. Jim dabbled in film making at that time with renditions of War of the Worlds and Julius Caesar (my closest approach to acting fame).

The emergence of the Space Race in the late 50’s and 60’s was a marvelous time. Jim loved the scientific and imaginative aspect of space exploration. It was in the popular culture through television (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers), movies (Forbidden Planet, Invaders from Mars, etc.), music (Telstar, Everyone’s Gone to the Moon), and literature. Jim read hundreds of science fiction books. His favorite authors (those I can recall) were Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Ursula LeQuin, Fred Hoyle, and Frank Herbert. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles was influential and inspiring for Jim.

I remember anxiously awaiting cloudless nights so we could track low orbiting communications satellites with our binoculars.

In high school Jim became engrossed in science. Particularly the physical and abstract sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Math, Astronomy, Cosmology. Around this time he won a Science Fair competition for his building of a LASER. He found musical expression in the drums and was in a local band for a few years. This was the time of the early Beatles and British Invasion. As I remember their name was taken from an early Rolling Stones album name, “December’s Children”.

The end of high school was a pivotal time for Jim. Our father who had been an alcoholic for at least 15 years had deteriorated and was abusive to all of us. Gene was forced by his employer to dry out in a rehab center which offered only temporary improvement in our home life. Instead of studying physics in college, Jim made an apparent 180 degree turn and decided to go to Herron Art School. My father virtually disowned Jim. All of us siblings supported Jim’s decision (not that Jim needed great support once he made his mind up about something). Anyone who really knew Jim knew how closely related science and art was in his mind. His decision to pursue art in the way that he did, with inspiration from science and employing mathematical precision, made sense.

At this time Jim met the woman he would marry and stay married to until his death. Kathy O’Neal, Jim’s wife, had a remarkably stabilizing effect on Jim and our whole family to be honest. She was a kind and lovely young woman. They married on October 31st, 1968. At that time sister Donna had met the man she would marry while in college at Indiana University.

This coincided with my mother divorcing my father and so began a much needed renaissance for us kids and my mother. We were all friends and supportive with each other. I still think very fondly of those days as they helped lessen the growing pains of myself, John, and Kim.

Jim and Kathy moved just North of Indianapolis to Zionsville after Herron Art School and Jim worked framing pictures at an art gallery, painting and drawing on his off-time.

For the next several years Jim and Kathy both would exhibit at local art fairs (particularly the Penrod and Broadripple art fairs). Jim’s reputation and sales grew considerably during this time. In the 70’s Jim began working at Lockerbee Gallery in a growing renovation area of downtown Indianapolis.

In the mid seventies Jim met Dr. John Miller and wife Suzanne. Dr Miller was a science and space exploration enthusiast and very much appreciated Jim’s art. They became very good friends and patrons until Dr Miller’s death just several months before Jim’s death. The friendship, encouragement, and inspiration the Miller’s brought to Jim cannot be overstated. John Miller was like a real father to Jim and he loved and admired Suzanne and her sensitive appreciation of art.

In the early 70’s Jim moved from abstract human figures to more space themed painting. Using acrylic paints, his medium of choice, he began his Mars series with dominant blue color. He also began his black and white space paintings. Geometric symmetry and perspective shading were marvelously detailed and balanced.

In 1974 Jim and Kathy had a baby girl naming her Lauren Ruth. Lauren was always an important part of their life. She displayed artwork at the fairs as a child with Mom and Dad.

Jim became a NASA artist with the NASA Art Program by invitation in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz launch. This began a wonderful relationship that lasted the rest of his life. Being at launches, witnessing technological majesty and prowess and discussing science and art with scientists, astronauts and fellow artists in the program absolutely exhilarated my brother.

The late 70’s and throughout the 1980’s Jim’s paintings evolved with his Chrysalis series, lonely black and white space scenes made sublimely peaceful by Jim’s detail to structure and symmetry; Shoreline series, prism like representations of the Cape Kennedy launches and sites; and Arum series, intricate kaleidoscopic renditions of astronomical features, both natural and artificial; Polyhedron series, black and white space paintings of astronomical features integrated with geometric forms; Florida Coast series, colorful rays of light broken and reassembled into marvelous abstract landscapes, inspired by his time at NASA. There are three paintings that belong in a series for which I have not found a name. In the Gallery I refer to these as the Chrystal Cosmos series.

In 1982 Jim and Kathy opened Cunningham Gallery in the Lockerbie area of downtown Indianapolis. Jim could now work at home and had a constant forum to display his art.

Jim and Kathy had many friends in the local art world and entertained in their lovely apartment above their gallery, when they could afford the time. I always enjoyed visiting them, discussing politics, sociology, but mostly science, art, and music. My brother and I always seemed to readily understand each other’s ideas.

The eighties were a time of much work with forays into sculpture/design (Prism Ascent hanging sculpture, 101 W. Ohio), theater backdrop (Dace Dondonis’ “Indiana” Rieti Festival, Indianapolis Ballet), and large murals (WTHR lobby, Paris Air Show). Jim’s participation in the artist exchange with Brazilian sister state Rio Grande do Sul, was an enlightening, productive and energizing experience for him. Before his death Jim had been visiting a sculptor friend in Northern California Wine Country and was keen on eventually moving out there.

In July 1991 Jim died in a helicopter crash along with his friend the pilot of the craft – his life truncated in mid stride.

Kathy Cunningham has become reclusive to Jim’s surviving family and his daughter Lauren died in 2013 of a previously unknown heart condition.

Jim found resonance in a quote by Thomas Browne, “Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us”. Jim had a fountain of ideas yet to come forth from that unique and prolific spring that shone so brightly under his invisible sun. Fortunately, Jim left an impressive body of work we can all enjoy and be inspired by.

 

When I see and ponder Jim’s work I feel the energy and power of his invisible sun.

 

 

Thomas Cunningham