Kent artist and community fixture Robert E. Wood, known for his idiosyncratic behavior but also for his artistic talent and contributions to the city’s artistic community, has died.
Wood, 68, died of a heart attack Sunday morning, friends and acquaintances said. He had lived in Kent since the mid-1960s.
While most well-known in Kent by his colorful nickname, Wood also was an incredibly talented artist. A staple at Kent’s Haymaker Farmers Market, he frequently sold his art there and at Art in the Park at Fred Fuller Park.
Marilyn Sessions, who works at Hometown Bank in Kent, said she would help Wood, who took public transportation or walked where he needed to go, get his artwork to Art in the Park, the annual event at Fred Fuller Park.
“He was my ‘date’ for Right at Home,” the Coleman Foundation’s annual art benefit, Sessions said. “He was a featured artist there and I always made sure he was able to get there.”
Wood moved to Kent from Struthers in Mahoning County in the 1960s and earned two art degrees at Kent State University. His training and time made him into a very mature artist, said F. John Kluth, who developed a friendship with Wood as members of the Kent art community.
Kluth, who owns the FJKluth Gallery on North Water Street in Kent, said in the 15 years the men knew each other, he often used Wood as a resource on artists and their exhibits.
“On a number of occasions, I took him to art exhibits where we had submitted his works,” Kluth said. “And he would go around and study each painting to such an extent that I could ask him, if I saw a notice about some artist having a show, ‘Do you recall this person?’ And he would say ‘Oh yes, he was in that show ...’ He could remember who was in what show that he went to. He had a very good memory for those kinds of things.”
Calling Wood “quite a character,” Kluth said he only learned Sunday that some of the unique characteristics of Wood’s personality were a result not of psychological disabilities, but physical imbalances in his brain chemistry.
“I’d known him for about 15 years, and what I’ve known is a person who was very, very focused on his art, very dedicated to it. He exhibited in some good exhibits, won some prizes, and he was recognized by the local community as a very good artist. But he was marching to his drummer, not someone else’s,” Kluth said.
One person who had a surprise encounter with Wood was Steve Wiandt of Ravenna. Wiandt, whose wife plays in Kent’s CommUniversity Band, was attending a concert at Home Savings Bank Plaza in Kent last July when he saw Wood, with his long hair and beard, sitting at a picnic table drawing.
Wiandt said he struck up a conversation with Wood, who was sketching with markers, and complimented his work, saying it reminded him of Henry Koerner, a painter and illustrator Wiandt studied under at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.
“He said he’d heard of him,” Wiandt said. “He was very quite, polite. He didn’t thank me for complimenting him but wasn’t rude either. I felt he was very approachable.”
Kluth said he is saddened Wood’s art is not displayed publicly in Kent, but is “pleased with the fullness he got out of his life.”
Wood “was very good at going to concerts, events and plays and art openings at the university and in the community,” Kluth said. “He was a very faithful patron of the arts.”
Kluth said he was told Wood would go to events at KSU and “was the only one who had the guts to ask a question of the speaker. These guest artists would come and they would intimidate everyone but Robert.”
Wood “lived frugally,” she said, and shunned government assistance. “He didn’t want it,” Sessions said.
And while he could sometimes portray “a gruff exterior,” Wood was “such a gentle, kind person,” Sessions said.
Kluth said as a gallery owner, the story he likes to tell most about Wood is when he tried to encourage him to appeal to the customer base in Kent to make more money off his art.
“He consistently refused,” Kluth said. “He said ‘I am an artist and I’m going to do it my way.’ He was very consistent in doing that. He hardly ever appealed to the customer or patron. He was purse. In his mind, he was a pure artist.”
Wood “was a community asset I think a lot of people missed out on,” he added. 
Wood has living relatives, but was not in contact with them at the time of his death, Kluth said. An informal celebration of Wood’s life and artwork is planned at the Kent Winter Market on Feb. 21, and more information will be made available on the market’s Facebook page. The market is located at Lucky Penny Creamery, 632 Temple Ave., off Lake Street.