Published: April 25, 2008 02:04 pm            

Into the Lion's Den

Neighbors April 26, 2008

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By Bobbie Poynter / Community Editor

Serenity Baumer, 34, can’t remember a time when she wasn’t drawing. At the tender age of 2, Baumer began drawing her version of the horses that ran in the pastures near her family’s small suburban home on the north end of Dayton, Ohio.

As the young girl grew, so did her artistic talents. Never receiving any formal artistic training, Baumer took her knack for drawing horses and used it to help her to create other animals.

“All the other animals have the same basic shape,” said Baumer, “They just need to be a little more stretched here or a little bit shortened there. Just a bit of re-doing here and there, and check it out, you’ve got a camel or a cow.”

As the oldest of three children, there was no shortage of talent in Baumer’s family. Each of her two younger brothers, just as their sister, began showing signs of having particular talents at an early age. Joe, the middle child, is now a computer programmer, and Garrett, the youngest sibling, is currently a professional photographer in Louisville.

“I guess you could say we inherited our talents,” she said. “Dad is a self-taught computer programmer, and he plays guitar and used to sing in a band.

“Mom, on the other hand, has a hidden talent she simply hasn’t told us about. Her sister says she used to draw a lot, but I’ve never seen any of it.”

Baumer is excited to see that her family’s talents run through her children. Her eldest son Ben, 12, is a home-schooled seventh grader and has already begun showing a strong aptitude for both math and art. His mother believes he inherited his talents both from herself and his father, and hopes that someday his budding talents will help him become a graphic designer or perhaps even an architect.

Her two younger children, Charlie, 6, and Lennon, 3, can both draw, and their mother said they each have great dexterity. Charlie, she added, is also very musical, quickly memorizing song words and even picking out tunes on the piano.

In the summer of 2007, Baumer began making weekend trips to Corbin at the request of her aunt and uncle Bud and Pat Miller. The Millers had recently bought a hotel in Corbin (now known as The Mountain View Lodge) and commissioned Baumer to paint a couple of murals for the new restaurant, The Lion’s Den.

“Originally, it was supposed to be a few day’s work,” she laughed, “but it turned out to be a long-term contract.”

With each new mural the young woman painted, another request was made of her. Eventually, Baumer gave up and moved her family from Louisville to Corbin.

A single mother of three, Baumer is glad she relocated to the Cumberland area.

“I really like Corbin,” she said. “Everybody knows everybody, and everyone is so self-reliant. They’re not dependent on the mall around the corner. Here you just kind of expect people to be honest more than in the city.

“I especially like the way everyone’s more open about things.

People are much more comfortable talking about themselves or their families. They’re really super down-to earth, not caught up in a lot of snooty attitudes.”

Baumer and her children live on a couple acres of farmland and raise chickens, goats and ducks.

“Moving here was such a culture shock for all of us,” she said, “but a pleasant one, I must admit. Nobody’s gonna throw a fit if you leave a toy on the lawn. The kids can run around barefoot in the yard, and I don’t have the constant worry that one of them will get run over on the road.

“We feel like we’re so much closer to nature here. Everything you see and feel is so real. Best of all, you even get to see the stars at night.”

Today, Baumer envisions the face of a child, her aunt and uncle’s great-grandchild to be exact, that she plans to add to the body of a mermaid on one of the many murals at the Mountain View Lodge. Two of the owners’ grandchildren, Nikki, 16, and Michella, 13, are already immortalized on the wall. Before she completes her work at the lodge, Baumer plans to add the likenesses of each of the Millers’ grandchildren onto the paintings.

In the meantime, she’ll be finishing up on a new project. While visiting friends in Corbin a few months ago, owners of The Semantics Gallery, a prominent Cincinnati art gallery, saw Baumer’s work at the hotel and were so impressed they asked her to submit three to five themed portraits for a gallery showing in May. The theme for the show is “Aging, It’s not just for kids anymore.”

Baumer’s submissions include two pigimies, a European woman and a tribal woman from Rowanda.

“I especially love painting tribal people. There’s beauty in that face that can never be bought,” said Baumer of her tribal woman’s portrait. “This person has never looked in a mirror in her life. I was asked to show what the concept of aging means today. To me it’s a timeless concept. The soul is timeless.”

Baumer’s artistic talents go beyond painting. In the past she has earned a little money sculpting miniature food plates – the kind that can be placed in doll houses.

She has also dabbled in fake taxidermy, meaning everything adorning the animal is of a man-made material, from bits of rope torn and shredded faux fur, to brush-bristle false eyelashes. One of Baumer’s favorite, and largest, creations is a deer head still hanging on the wall in a Cincinnati pub.

“I still get a kick out of hearing how many people want to know who killed that buck,” she chuckled, “but as an animal advocate, it personally makes me feel good to know that nobody had to kill an animal to put it up there.”

As a commissioned artist, Baumer gets her inspiration from the person commissioning the artwork. She lets them tell their story of why they need the work done. She listens closely for what it is that makes their heart pound.

“It’s all about feelings,” she said. “It’s the picture I envision coming from their heart.”

Not all of her commissioned artwork has been painted in bright colored oils. Baumer sees colors meaning different things to different people.

“Colors can fade and dull over time,” she mused, “but, black and white stays just that, black and white.”

For that reason, when Baumer was commissioned to do a picture on a coalmining theme, it simply had to be in all black and white. The artist felt that black and white was the only way to capture the nostalgia in the owner’s voice.

Baumer expects the work she is doing for the Mountain View Lodge to be completed sometime at the end of the summer or early fall.

At least that’s the plan.

“I finish a project and begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said, “but they just keep finding new jobs for me to do.”

That’s just fine for Serenity Baumer right now because she and her children have no plans to leave the Cumberland area anytime in the near future, thanks to what the artist calls the “I am what I am” and “what you see is what you get” attitude of the locals.

“I could get used to this place real fast,” she said.

        

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