By Richard Hayes
It is not uncommon for a person to be good at something.
Nearly all of us have a special niche we fill with our unique skill. Every now and then you run into someone whose talents fill up one niche and then spread to the next and the next, and before long, you don’t know what to call them—graphic designer, dancer, fine artist, muralist, photographer, or craftsman.
Keith Ramsey is one of those rare creatures. During the Richmond Folk Fesitival, it is likely that you saw him on the dance floor moving with a grace that is surpris- ing for a man of his size. His concentration on the dance floor is only broken by a smile or laugh. Ramsey could never be called small in size or personality.
A surprisingly large number of people have seen Ramsey’s work without knowing it. For example, hundreds of Richmonders get their morning dose of weekend java from the Crossroads coffee truck in Forest Hill Park. The truck with its blue and yellow stripes is the handiwork of Ramsey.
While his day job is graphic design, somehow Ramsey has always had the creative energy to create. His fine art shows that he is equally talented with a brush and a camera. Although he lives in Swansboro and calls his home “the farm” because of the amount of land around it and the gardens planted, it’s the city that provides much of the inspiration for his art.
Recently he has delved into Steampunk, the bastard child of science-fiction and the Victorian steam age. In its laziest form, it involves slapping a gear on a piece of clothing. Ramsey however takes diverse mechanical forms and not only truly integrates them with soft items such as clothing but also turns them into functional pieces of furniture. There are no gears simply slapped anywhere.
Ramsey admits that his latest project was a test. At the last minute organizers of the Richmond Street Art Festival, which is responsible for the gorgeous murals on the aban- doned bus barn in the Fan, came to him with a canvas. The only problem was the canvas was two massive, soot-covered garage doors and he had never done a project this big before.
After some gentle nudging from the unofficial Kings of RVA Murals, Ed Trask and Hamilton Glass, and more than a little self-reflection, Ramsey jumped in with both brushes. Five days of work resulted in little sleep, a sore back, dodged rainstorms, and one more artistic field that Ramsey had crossed with style. In the end Pipe Dream #4 ended up being 16 feet high by 34 feet long.