Earnest Angley's Cathedral Buffet and Life of Christ Display (Closed)
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
The Life of Christ Display showcases the miniature dioramas and black velvet painting of Paul Cunningham, a self-taught artist of meager education and unspecified employment. The brochure mentions that Cunningham was an acquaintance of Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mt. Rushmore, although how this helped Cunningham's art is unexplained.
The dioramas are realistic and detailed (and far superior to the black velvet paintings), and present the usual highlights of Jesus's life: the Sermon on the Mount, the Last Supper, the Resurrection, etc. Helpful signs offer nuggets of information, such as, "He [Cunningham, not Jesus] could condense a mile of space into five feet of depth," and "Human fingernails were used on many of the figures to give the display a 'living' quality."
It took Cunningham about a year to create each scene, and he made 30 of them. Thirteen are on display in Cuyahoga Falls (others are in Eureka Springs, Arkansas) and when Cunningham died in 1985, that was the extent of his portfolio. "I have no other desire than to portray the life of Christ," he is quoted as saying, and obviously he meant it.
The dioramas are in the basement of the Cathedral Buffet and Banquet Center, which is run by televangelist Earnest Angley, who has exhorted people to touch their TV screens and be "HEE-yulled" since the 1970s.
The dining hall itself is disappointingly institutional, but Earnest's personal office anteroom is pure Las Vegas bordello, decorated in red crushed velvet -- even the walls. On the signs outside of the building, Angley's name shares billing with the WB frog, to whom he has apparently subcontracted his production facilities.