Cincinnati native Steve Plattner was trained as a photographic historian but now concentrates on photographing landscapes, the American South, and Native American earthworks in the Ohio Valley. He has spent many years traveling the country photographing American visionaries and their environments. This exhibition is a collection of these stunning photographs.

Persistence of Vision documents and honors a selection of American Visionaries and their often idiosyncratic, highly personal worlds. As a whole, this diverse group defies simple categorization. Historians, folklorists, and art critics often tend to classify them as folk, outsider, naive, eccentric, or “yard artists.” For the purposes of this show, the term “visionary” best describes their collective ethos and provides a broad, inclusive framework for understanding the body of their work.

Coming from a wide range of backgrounds, each of these visionaries has pursued their own persistent vision, charting their own distinct path. The conceptual and stylistic scope of their visions is as vast as the variety of materials and techniques they employ.

Many have built impressive structures – castles, museums, places of worship, miniature amusement parks, or extraordinary homes. Clarke Bedford, Harrod Blank, Kurt Hughes, Tud Krohn, and Tim Willis have created various forms of vehicle-based art. Joe Minter’s African Village in America memorializes the endless trials endured by African Americans. Juanita Leonard and Reverend Jimmy Morrow are devoted messengers delivering the gospel of Jesus through their art and the services they conduct in their small churches. Jim Phillips displays his spectacular collection of more than 16,000 Rocky Mountain antler sheds in his own museum. In the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, Dominic Cano Espinoza’s gleaming castle – built entirely of found materials – is inspired by the Buddhist temples he admired as an infantryman in the Vietnam War. 

These visionaries inhabit every corner of America. They come from all walks of life – mechanics, engineers, machinists, carpenters, factory workers, museum workers, veterans, preachers, farm laborers, and a hobo turned cowboy, among others. Their works express a broad array of social, political, and spiritual themes and messages.

Through their persistence of vision, the sometimes-marginalized souls shown here have built hand-crafted kingdoms – places and objects rich in meaning, full of unintended beauty. Borrowing words from author James Baldwin, pursuing their own paths on the margins of American society, these visionaries “make the kingdom new [and] make it honorable and worthy of life.”