While the ridiculous Ameriflora exhibition took up residence at Franklin Park in downtown Columbus in 1992 – inexplicably there to commemorate the 500th anniversary Columbus “discovering America” – then-President George Herbert Walker Bush paid it a visit. Thankfully, Goblinhood was present to exorcise the spirit of the ex-CIA director from the park and restore it to its natural state that we enjoy today. He did so with stalks of broccoli, knowing that the President would recoil from his most hated vegetable, that had been banned from the White House.
  Goblinhood, his suitcase, and cosmic weevil dolls, were creatures commonly found in the Short North during the 1990s, especially at the Acme Art Company gallery and performance space run by the late Lori McCargish. Wearing a spider-covered face mask, cape and clothes adorned with art, Goblinhood recited poetry at political events, performed on Comfest stages, and could be found giving tarot cards readings at a Free Press Second Saturday salon.
  Goblinhood, aka Jim Beoddy, is best known for his fantastic art. His paintings are elaborate, provocative masterpieces that tell a multitude of stories. Beoddy’s comics, often produced for the Free Press, scour political, religious and cultural norms. He has the distinction of having his art being called “satanic” after a showing in a Newark, Ohio art gallery. To his credit, walls containing Beoddy murals at the old Northwood Center on campus, a building housing the Free Press and other radical political groups, were the only things still standing when the place burned down in 1982.
  Beoddy’s performance art pieces are inspiring. His poetic treatise on “The Silent Sticks and Stones” is legendary. Here is one quote:

"The silent sticks and stones around,
We fashioned on this stolen ground
Into the pyramids we’ve built
As tombstones for collective guilt."

  An early Beoddy cover cartoon for the Free Press showed a Columbus cop hitting a hippie in the head. Police harassment has been a re-occurring theme in his art and performances. In the 1990s when students in the OSU campus area created Cop Watch, Beoddy often led them with his prophetic poem “Attila the Pig.” The refrain involved group participation, as Beoddy chanted:

"Stop, halt! Put your hands up in frightening chorus
Attila the Pig makes our eyes water for us."

  It was a reference to the macing of students capturing police harassment on video.
  Recently Beoddy embraced manually created 3D “anaglyphic and chromadepth” art that, if you look at it through special glasses, makes a flat image come to life before your eyes.
  Beoddy’s newest art endeavor is what he describes as “surrealist abstraction, taking real things and making them abstract and real at the same time.” The new paintings are more pastel than his usual look, thanks to the influence of “Chimera,” the female character who collaborates with Jim with her own way of drawing. Chimera is a creation of Beoddy’s personality and her paintings derive from his left hand, lending a lighter, more colorful, “old hippie chick” vibe to his artwork.
  On May 1 -2, Beoddy’s work will be on display at the Vanderelli Room Art Gallery, 218 McDowell St., in Franklinton.
  You can find Beoddy’s art online at the Fred Scruton Photography site: fredscruton.com/outsider-artists/james-beoddy-columbus