Ralph Frank’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness

In a way, Ralph Frank, Jr. was born to do it. Featured image courtesy of Garry Pound

 

by Frank Etheridge

“I grew up on the south side,” the Columbus native recalls, pointing out that he was born in 1951 at what’s called “the old hospital” that predated Martin Army Hospital, where his two younger siblings where born. “My dad stuck a lettering brush in my hand more than a few times, but I wanted none of it. I wanted to do art. I always liked art.”

Speaking as he sits in his bedroom huddled near the warmth from a cast-iron, wood-burning stove (a tub of water atop it heating up) on a December morning, Frank calls his dad, Ralph Frank, Sr. “my number-one inspiration coming up in my youth.” After fighting with the 10th Armored Division during World War II and Korea, the elder Frank retired from the Army in Columbus. He sold insurance and “worked at a gas station for 50 bucks a week, supporting a family,” his son says, before joining the Civil Service. Ralph, Sr.’s job as an illustrator found him screen printing and hand painting at Ft. Benning.

“He worked in large art, creating training aids—big charts on how to take a rifle apart,” Frank, Jr. says, pointing to pictures assembled in a portfolio he grabs from the next room. “He did lettering, too. And he did stuff at home, for the church, and did some fine art for himself.”

Putting Columbus in the rear-view mirror as soon as possible after graduating from Baker High School, Frank in 1969 moved up north with relatives before spending a year in California. He next hitch-hiked to Ft. Collins, Colorado, where a hometown friend lived. There he found work stripping and sanding old signs. A quick detour back to Georgia then on to Eugene, Oregon. Frank worked as a day laborer and would walk around and spot signs that had faded out, asked the business owners if he could repaint it. “That’s how I started out as a sign painter,” says Frank.

Though he “couldn’t get out of here fast enough” after high school, family brought Frank back to Columbus for good in the ‘80s. He began scaling 50 and 100-foot billboards to paint ads for (Mike) Morris Signs Company—whose contract with Golden Park sent Frank to paint 80 some-odd ads (on signs measuring 16 feet by 8) hung along the then-minor league baseball field’s outfield fence—including one boldly boasting the city’s old slogan, “We’re Talking Proud.” Demand and recognition for Frank’s hand-letter talents grew further as people saw his sign adorning the high-profile 13th Street location of Colaianni Music Company (today Everything Musical), where he also refinished pianos.

“I do a lot of different stuff, but my forte is moving paint,” says Frank. “Mostly I use oil-based enamel for my commercial stuff. When I do my art, I use acrylics. I use the ‘oops’ colors—the tester colors the store made but the customer didn’t like. You can get them real cheap—50 cents for the sample size cans—and you get all these off-the-wall colors. I never had any official color training besides what they taught us in grade school—primary colors and how yellow and blue make green and all.”

“People say they recognize my letters,” he continues, “but I just tweaked them a little bit from their origins as Roman letters. I had a conversation with this real educated  sign painter; he was explaining how there are thousands and thousands of lettering types. I call mine Ralphabetz.”

Today the talent behind dozens of signs emblazoned in Ralphabetz on businesses across the Chattahoochee Valley, Frank is also an accomplished folk artist. His vivid, utterly original paintings are sought out by collectors across the country. The city commissioned Frank’s patriotic mural along Veterans Parkway (recently touched up by Columbus High School art students) during the 1990s. More recently, Uptown, Inc. has hired him to transform electrical boxes and trash cans in Broadway’s showcase median into attractive art.   

Still, making a living as an artist ain’t easy. “My hey day was in the ‘90s,” says Frank. “It’s all digital now.”

Plans to computerize his portfolio stopped when his digital camera broke, he admits. Yet, his house functions as both studio and gallery, with Frank pointing out tools and workspaces while discussing the paintings that line the walls as he walks from room to room. Away from the closed-door bedroom with its wood-burning stove, it’s cold inside.

“It’s pretty ancient and has lots of issues,” Frank says of his white wood-framed house, which he rents from Billy Buck, perched atop a hill facing west over downtown and old enough to be visible in an 1886 map of Columbus. “I’ve been here 11 years. I had a lady stay with me for a while but she kept complaining about having holes in the ceiling. I said, ‘I told you I wasn’t living in no chateau.’ All these years of being accused of  being a hippie, when I moved in here I finally started living like one.”

*****

“My daddy always liked Ralph,” says fellow folk artist Butch Anthony, talking by phone just before hosting one of his weekly Friday evening Possum Trot auctions. “Daddy hated hippies, but he always told me, ‘Ralph is the only hippie I’ve ever liked.’ I’m crazy about Ralph. He’s a sweetheart. And he’s the best dancer I know.”

The nationally recognized Anthony for years hosted on his land near Seale, Alabama, the Doo-Nanny, a free-wheeling freak show and art sale that had felt like a festival on the fringe. “Ralph’s the only one to catch fire at the Doo-Nanny. It was 2010, I think, and I was trying to get a cotton-rag tied around a cane pole to ignite the big burn we have every year. Well, it flew off and hit Ralph right in the chest. I said, ‘Oh shit, Ralph’s on fire!’ But he jumped on it, put it out, and just kept dancing.”

Anthony hired Frank to “paint about every sign I got out here,” from an old junk store to his Museum of Wonder’s drive-thru entrance. “I just like it,” Anthony answers of what draws him to Frank’s work. “You can always spot Ralph’s font style. There’s must be 30 or 40 stores around where you can say, ‘There’s a Ralph.’ And they’re for cool old stores. Hot-dog stands and striper lounges. It’d make for a great coffee-table book.”

Eminent Columbus-based portrait artist Garry Pound recently included Frank in his superb “Fountain City Faces” series of drawings of fellow coffeeshop regulars.

“Ralph is just one of a kind—the kind of local character that make a community great,” Pound tells The Local. “Also, he’s just got a great face to draw. Any artist would love to draw him.”

Pound quickly sold two of his portraits of Frank, who received one as a gift from a friend. The other was bought by local businessman/The Loft owner Buddy Nelms, whose second-floor nightclub stairwell is graced by the playful piano keys painted by Frank.

“He’s a terrific sign painter,” Pound says. “You see his everywhere—it’s iconic now. He’s a professional; he works like a dog at his craft. Creative as well. Not just a sign painter, he’s an artist.”

****

Frank, back by the wood-burning stove in his bedroom, is preparing to leave home for one of several side jobs (in neighbors’ yards, at the MCSD school-bus warehouse). A few days prior, he worked outside—standing at a work table in his side yard with its expansive survey of the city below—putting the finishing touches on repainting/restoring street signs for the Columbus Historic District.

“My goal, as I try to get through the day, is to not leave any piles or step in any,” explains Frank. “You got to find joy in your life. Find something that makes you happy. People engage in bad decisions. Sometimes it’s self-torture, self-destruction. You have to forgive yourself whatever mistakes you’ve made so you can progress.”

He was enlisted in the Army and one week away from boarding the bus to serve in recon along the Czech-German border when his superiors learned Frank lied on his application about having a misdemeanor marijuana conviction (“for six joints”). Instead of following his officer’s order to see an Army psychiatrist in Atlanta and get a waiver, Frank hitchhiked to Oregon.   

“I should’ve been dead several times,” Frank confesses. “I was a meth addict. I did some of my best work when I was high and had been up for a couple of days. Something was missing in my life and I had to come to grips with it. You have to find some spirituality. By the grace of God and a loving family, I’ve been clean for 10 years.”

Looking forward, he’d like to get more movie work (he helped on the set of Mississippi Burning filmed in Lafayette, Alabama in the ‘80s), create a large-scale mural, and pass his knowledge down to someone—his four nephews and his friend Sean Crane, a rising talent at painting windows, having recently jobs at Club Martini’s and Minnie’s Uptown Restaurant, come to mind as possible proteges.

Clearly, Ralph Frank, Jr. has wisdom to spare.

“I spent my life questioning things; I was a rebel without a cause,” he says. “But I’m retired from fighting anything. I’ve felt like burning all my work more than a few times. But then I know it’s all been a blessing.”