Angie and Ronald Nunez, Jr.’s collection of art, commissioned by Cameron Telephone, is being showcased in a free art exhibit “Cameron Telephone Book Covers Through The Years” at Henning Cultural Center in Sulphur.
The exhibit will run through Thursday, Sept. 18.
They are shown pictured above in the gallery during a reception held on Thursday, Aug. 21 with “The Borealis Rex” commissioned in 1986 and painted by artist, James L. Hendrick, III.
In the early 1900s, the paddle wheel steamer Borealis Rex traversed Calcasieu River from Lake Charles to Cameron, the only communications and transportation between the two communities. The Borealis Rex stopped at landings along the river delivering mail, freight and passengers. Kendrick’s oil painting captures the Rex loading passengers and freight at one of its many stops along Calcasieu.
The artist, James L. Kendrick, III was a helicopter pilot during the Vietnamese war. In 1976 he returned to New Orleans where he began a full time art career. Kendrick has won numerous awards in art shows throughout the Southeast. He is well known for his marine paintings and scenes of life along Southern bayous. Art collectors value his compositions of plantation homes, old New Orleans and Southern still life.
At the reception were two sisters who related their dad, Mr. Hoffpauir of Sulphur had been the President of Cameron Telephone Company for 70 years. While listening to J. T. Henning’s discussion a restructuring of the company, he jested as a lineman for the company that he wanted to be the President. They said the meeting wrapped up with him being told he’d be the President. He had started working for the company at 17 years old.
Even the Cameron Parish Pilot’s humble beginnings can be traced back to J. T. Henning, founder of Cameron Telephone Company. Founding publisher of the Pilot, Jerry Wise told Henning his plans to start a newspaper in 1956 and Henning advanced him $200 for advertising which became the start-up capital for Wise to start the local, weekly newspaper.
Nunez said, “I was first given a print by a local neighbor and later got a few more from another friend, then some from Fastwyre and I spent many hours trying to finish the collection of the last ten or twelve.” The Nunez’s came to possess the collection after the predecessor of Cameron Telephone, Fastwyre decided to remodel their office. The collection was missing a print of “Shrimp Boats” that Ronald reached out to Baton Rouge original artist, Stan Roth, to recover the print. He still hopes to gain an original from the Cameron Telephone distribution that customers of the telephone book for decades received in the mail as a gift at the release of each year’s new telephone book in the mail. Nunez’s collection is 29 framed and matted prints.
The exhibition sponsored by The Brimstone Museum and Sulphur Parks and Recreation is free to the public to explore decades of history through the artistic lens of those that came before us as well as learn the history of SWLA’s most famous vistas.
The exhibition will run through Sept. 18, at the Henning Cultural Center located at 923 S. Rutherford St., Sulphur. The phone number is 337-527-0357.