Robert Richard (Orb) Cheatham

7/27/1948-1/10/2022

*Obit was taken from social media post of Sloane DarlingtonRobinson 2/21/2022

Robert Cheatham, the preeminent artist, musician, writer, curator, teacher and torchbearer of the avant garde art and music scene in Atlanta, Georgia has died at the age of 73 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

One could justifiably describe Robert as a renaissance man full of words to pen, music to play, art to sculpt/ paint/ draw, gardens to grow, houses to build and ideas to give (abnormal)shape. Whether he was dying his hair pink or refusing to compromise his artistic voice, Robert wasn’t so much full of mischief, as he was a full-on-in-your-face creative genius gesturing his conductor’s baton like a hot iron poker in the eye of “the(proverbial) man.” Robert was definitely a rebel with (many) causes or, perhaps, more of a provocateur daring us to reflect on what is to become of the human(ity) as technology roams fastly freely forward towards the unknown.

Born on July 27, 1948 to Bennie Franklin and Martha Mae Cheatham(Taylor) in Union, Mississippi during America’s great baby boom. Robert was unquestionably shaped by his home state and the generation to which he was born. His formative years were spent between his parents’ pink asbestos-sided house his father and Robert’s uncles built on what was then coined Cheatham Hill located a few blocks south of the Philadelphia, MS courthouse and roaming the land of his maternal grandparents’ farm located on the outskirts of town in the ghost-of-a-community called Deemer. Robert often recalled memories of warming himself by the potbelly wood-burning stove in the center of his grandmother’s kitchen in the unpainted clapboard home complete with a wraparound porch.

An innate curiosity of language and knowledge guided Robert from an early age and never left. His mother tells of how even as a very young child, he’d carry an encyclopedia around with him. However, Robert’s childhood memories of Mississippi included the sour as well as the sweet. Behaviors that seemed in conflict of one another were two distinct memories: one where he attended the annual tent revival at Beacon Street Baptist Church where the preacher taught about Jesus’s love and acceptance but of God’s judgment and Satan’s hell and damnation (Robert would later incorporate this memory in an uncanny performance clothed in a Southern Gentllema’s seersucker suit) and that of the horrific social order of segregation in order to uphold white supremacy. The ‘Whites ONLY’ versus the ‘Colored’ entrances to the Eills movie theater in downtown Philadelphia burned an impression that informed the art and music and writings the artist would later create.

For his book, Metaphysical in Mississippi, Cheatham describes the text as “floating debris, jettisoned and sunk, flotsam and jetsam… It forms an interregnum, or better yet, a fainting away, a syncope, a pause, or swoon, during which time half-digested bits and pieces of thought and reflection make brief appearances only to fade back into the void, often tongue-tied and stuttering, relapsing from academic to demotic to speaking in tongues.” For Robert, the past formed an acerbic palatable twin of himself from which he maneuvered alongside for the rest of his life.

Robert’s mother taught piano and his father was a high school teacher and basketball coach, later retiring as an assistant principal. Eventually, Bennie Cheatham’s job took the family to Smyrna, Georgia. As he pivoted into adolescence, Robert discovered Jazz- the music that he’d have a relationship with for the rest of his life. He would spend his time driving around downtown Atlanta in his Corvair listening to the radio, discovering record shops and flipping through the latest albums.

Following high school, he attended the Georgia Institute of Technology and received his BA in philosophy and psychology from the University of West Georgia. After getting his undergraduate degree, Robert married his highschool sweetheart, Paula Dressel. Cheatham matriculated and pursued a graduate degree in philosophy at the University of Georgia. He dabbled in student body politics and dove more deeply into music. It was then that Robert began to explore drawing and making sculptural art furniture pieces. He successfully sold his work and participated in the early years of Atlanta’s Piedmont Park Art Festival. While in grad school, Robert began teaching himself to play the saxophone. He never learned to read music but could play most any instrument. Mostly a composer of free jazz and noise music, when asked to play “a song” he’d often blow a sonorous rendition of Amazing Grace from his sax. The closest he came to forming pop-compositions was in his 1990’s band Shear where he played alongside his younger brother, John Cheatham.

After graduate school Cheatham and Dressel moved to Atlanta. In 1979 Robert began playing music publicly under the aegis of an umbrella arts group called The Coalition for Creative Music. Around this time, he performed weekly with Dance Unite at Nexus for a year.

In the eighties, Robert began working with the building contractor, Robin Singer. Singer would remain one of Robert’s closest and dearest friends for the rest of his life. Eventually, Robert and Paula built their own house in the Lake Claire neighborhood. Robert discovered his passion for gardening and plants. He loved anything that would ‘take over.’ The home itself was an early experiment in passive solar and consisted of mosaic walls, Robert’s handmade lighting fixtures, hand-painted ceilings disguised as the sky and a kitchen island that appeared to break out of the saltillo tile floor and emerged as a work of art in and of itself. It was in this fabulous home, Robert entertained and interviewed French Philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard, along with countless other writers, professors, artists, musicians and neighbors. Always a generous spirit, Robert chose to cultivate relationships with creative and thoughtful people and had meaningful lifelong friendships. Robert and Paula divorced in 1996.

Robert was constantly shifting, moving and evolving his artistic medium of choice. However, his interest in ‘the uncanny’ and technology’s ‘pressure’ on society, memory, time and our general human existence runs consistently throughout his artistic work and projects. You could find a book on these topics, and almost any other you’d care to research, among the hundreds of volumes he collected over the decades. Robert, himself, was a prolific writer, often publishing under his nom de plume, Fehta Murghana.

As executive director of Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery from its inception in 1998 to 2008, Cheatham created an environment where artists were allowed to experiment, take risks and collaborate, practices not usually supported in the mainstream commercial galleries of the day. Not only did Cheatham encourage his fellow artists/ musicians/ performers to push the boundaries in their work, but he actually physically built the walls and helped design the stage for them to hang their art and on which to perform. To say he was devoted to Eyedrum is an understatement. Although, if asked he’d explain it was more about creating an environment for himself to exist and be understood.

Other career highlights include: the co-founding of Pinelandia Art Gallery, Philadelphia, MS; exhibited over thirty works of installation art; wrote, edited and published ten books; wrote movie and book reviews throughout his 40 year career; interviews and art reviews for Art Papers; in 1990 he helped form the non-profit Public Domain, Inc. and was co-director for over thirty years; created and promoted the hugely successful and popular artnews listserv (this was before myspace, facebook, twitter, etc.); worked as senior editor of Perforations; co-ordinator/moderator of Working Papers; taught at Atlanta College of Art; curated art shows; music conductor; donated his art to raise money for Atlanta’s non-profit organizations including AIDS research for a 1990 Tinnitus performance at "The Improvisers" series of the Montreux Jazz Festival sponsored by the City of Atlanta; participated in Destroy All Music; formed the bands: Klang, Knox,Tinnitus and Brahvar Large Ensemble; participated in The Coalition for Creative Music; began the FORT!/da? label, in 2008 Fort!/ da? would evolve into his book press; handled all promotion and curated the Monthly Improv Night at Eyedrum 1998-2010, providing all the liner notes and releasing over one hundred CD recordings. Robert was working on a new body of work of paintings, new writing and installation projects in his last few years of his life while battling Parkinson’s.

For a deeper understanding of the man and the artist, consider a visit to his website http://www.pd.org/~zeug/rrcvita.htm, although somewhat abandoned after 2010 but with Cheatham’s involvement in the arts scene in Atlanta during the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s that a look at his website provides cultural and historical context of what was happening in the city for artists at that time.

In 2008 Robert married his longtime friend, Sloane Robinson and at age of sixty became a father for the first time. Although the couple divorced in 2018, Sloane cared for Robert throughout his battle with Parkinson’s and with the help of his siblings and close friend, Jim Demmers, tried to provide as much support as possible during his last months of life.

Robert passed away at The Phoenix at Johnson Ferry in Marietta, GA where he was living in the last three months of his life at 10:30 p.m., January 10, 2022. Robert Cheatham is preceded in death by his father Bennie Franklin Cheatham. He is survived by his son, Rowan George Cheatham of Collinsville, MS, his mother, Martha Cheatham and brother, John Cheatham of Smyrna, GA, sister, Lisa Baker (David Baker) of Atlanta, GA, three nephews and two nieces, countless close friends and the art community of Atlanta.

Memorial service

April 16, 2022 / 6 p.m.

Beech Hollow Wildflower Farms

389 North Clarendon Ave

Scottdale GA 30079

oRb Cheatham

robot cowboy clown.

cowboy clown robot.

robot clown cowboy.

Clown cowboy robot.

current board musings + thoughts on Robert Cheatham

all images provided by Unisa Asokan

“It has been difficult for me to put into words anything that could in any way fit what Robert meant to the legacy of eyedrum. Much like the machinations of his conductions, he helped orchestrate ideas into art realities, music realities … realities. He listened and he pushed dialogue and discourse. We were encouraged to think. We were encouraged to be passionate about what we were passionate about. There were no rules really aside from not being a dick. Cheatham was never controlling, he had this bemused grin a lot of the time. Serving eyedrum during that period was magic. And serving alongside Robert - well, whether he wanted to be or no he was quite the mentor. And will be missed quite a bit.” -Deisha Oliver

eyedrum board meeting 2006 - Robert Cheatham, Stan Woodard, Omar Khalid, Woody Cornwell, Randy Castello, Deisha Oliver

“All of my role models are women, except for Robert Cheatham. We served the same tour of duty eyedrum Art & Music Gallery 1999 - 2009 when it felt like a think tank as much as it was a celebration, a place to build. Conversations on the loading docks are part of the program. It’s about the discourse and the platform for collaboration. The incubation of projects. He spoke of complex esoteric ideas with tones of conviction and tenderness. He taught hundreds (thousands?) of musicians how to improvise, a skill that transcends the stage. It teaches how to listen, how to adapt. Such valuable lessons captured in the conducted chaos of performance. So essential to so many beings.” -Unisa Asokan