About the Museum

C.H. Rockey in front of his home and studio.
10 Canon Avenue in
Historic Manitou Springs
C.H. Rockey painting in
Manitou Springs

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When you step inside Rockey’s studio and home you’ve entered the realm of Rockey, the domain of one who lives, breathes and totally immerses himself in art. The walls are a dense, floor-to-ceiling patchwork of paintings of all sizes with intricate frames he crafted himself. If not for the high ceilings and sidelong sunlight, one could imagine being a rummage shop from Middle Earth. The walls are stacked with paintings and every flat surface is filled with art, some found and most created. Much of the furniture custom made and might feature a face or figure somewhere. The 10-foot-tall statue of a dressed-down Zebulon Pike, was the prototype for a public installation that didn’t pan out, and above is a dangling dragon-kite whose talons clutch a doll-damsel that, as Rockey liked to say, is not in distress but freshly rescued from an unwelcome suitor…

The studio is a rococco profusion of large-leaf plants, ornatelycarved furniture, sculptures, masks, costumes and a phantasmagoric array of whatnots and doodads. Hand-painted lampshades and fanciful light fixtures of strange devising dangle from the ceiling alongside Casablancan propeller-fans, as does a three-foot pterodactyl (a functional kite) with a maiden dangling from its beak, and a delightful DaVinci-like airplane fashioned out of twigs and leaves.

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Over to the side, a Tolkein-esque treehouse twists like a helix from tabletop to ceiling alongside a magnificent wooden table with a rotund base into which Rockey has carved an ingenious series of gargolye-like figures he calls “The Three Egos.” An arm’s-length away sits an imposing, straight-backed love seat with its headboard and armrests carved into caricatures, nudes and leafy patterns.

 

Zebulon – Unfinished
Eve and Adam
The Tree House

Over to the side, a Tolkein-esque treehouse twists like a helix from tabletop to ceiling alongside a magnificent wooden table with a rotund base into which Rockey has carved an ingenious series of gargolye-like figures he calls “The Three Egos.” An arm’s-length away sits an imposing, straight-backed love seat with its headboard and armrests carved into caricatures, nudes and leafy patterns.

Midroom is dominated by a nine-foot plaster torso of a nude Zeubulon Pike that Rockey says was intended to be, and will one day still be, a bronze statue. To its side is a six-foot-high dressing screen upon which Rockey has painted life-sized, Rubenesque-proportioned male and female nudes cavorting lasciviously against a backdrop of classical arcadia. Rockey cut out oval holes where their faces would be in hope of enticing visitors to peek out and ham it up.

Rockey’s living quarters in the far back reaches of the studio consist mostly of a mattress on the floor adjacent to a simple, sparse and decidedly “rustic” kitchen. Fountain Creek flows by in melodious burble at the bottom of the backdoor steps.

These digs — purchased by Rockey back in 1972 for $17,000 — are a direct extension and manifestation of the playful irreverence and creative exuberance that drive his life and art. If he had the inclination and were he to play his cards right, C.H. Rockey could be rich, but he lives happily in near-Franciscan frugality amid a cornucopia treasure trove of art.

 

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