Guadagno is a 53-year-old nurse who, for a decade and a half, has cared for AIDS patients in their last few days of life. He began tending the dying in the 1980s, when he was a hospital nurse and AIDS was perceived as a terrifying plague. At the time, fearful hospital staffers would routinely abandon the afflicted, leaving them to die in pain in their isolated hospital rooms.
Guadagno quit his job as a hospital nurse, and began to survive on donations from family members of the dead and from those in the gay community who supported his work.
For sure, terminal AIDS patients were lucky if they found out about the Reverend Sky. Sometimes, Guadagno nursed them in their own homes. Other times, if the invalids were homeless or deserted by their families, he'd take them to his house, to the death room and the pink futon and Indian drums, where they could die holding the Reverend's hand.
What little money he managed to save he invested in art--carefully, he says, purchasing undervalued pieces in the local art market. Then he'd sell the art when its price went up, making a bit of a profit.
He didn't make millions or even too many thousands--he didn't need a lot. He lived simply, but he had no financial security.
Then he got the idea he could double his life savings of about $30,000 by investing in an art deal offered by the Gallery Rodeo, then of Scottsdale; Lake Arrowhead; Hot Springs, Arkansas; and Beverly Hills.
The art market appears now not to have been as sound an area of investment as Reverend Sky had hoped. And Gallery Rodeo is now as elusive as his missing artwork.
Reverend Sky lives amid cliched Native American decor in a small house in the foothills of South Mountain. The fellow used to have a perfectly good name--Gerald Michael Guadagno--but these days he prefers to be called Sky Nighthawk Guadagno. He's a nondenominational minister who seems more like a Sedona-style New Age shaman. He's a muscular, bearded white guy who lives in a house that has eagle feathers and Indian drums and paintings of Indian chiefs in practically every room. He says he studied with a medicine man. He got the title of Reverend after graduating from the nondenominational "University of Life" in Phoenix.
Okay, so he's a typical touchy-feely New Age savant. But you should not judge too harshly a man who has spent his last 15 years tending terminally ill men, women and children.
Sitting on his Indian-style couch and wearing a tee shirt with a buffalo design, he explains that when he needed a break from nursing the dying, he would treat himself to an Art Walk and dinner at Malee's, a trendy Thai restaurant in the center of Scottsdale's art district. He claims he learned a great deal about investing in art during his forays into Scottsdale.
But he didn't learn enough.
In 1994, he thought he'd made a killer investment--Gallery Rodeo in Scottsdale, through its affiliate Gallery Rodeo of Beverly Hills, offered him prints by Brett Livingstone-Strong, an artist who often included Native Americans in his paintings. Gallery representatives persuaded Reverend Sky he could buy prints from Gallery Rodeo at a discounted price, and the gallery could later resell them for an immense profit. Reverend Sky purchased $18,400 worth of Livingstone-Strong art. He kept a few pieces in his house, then later returned them all to the gallery for resale at the request of gallery officials, he says.
The Reverend was so taken by Gallery Rodeo's "investment" opportunities that he decided to pay an additional $11,500 for 50 Renoir lithographs. This time, he signed up for a "Dealer Participation" deal--the gallery would keep the art, supposedly resell it, send Reverend Sky a check for twice his investment.
But the dealer wasn't participating, apparently. By January 1997, Gallery Rodeo hadn't sold a single piece of Reverend Sky's art, and he began to get suspicious and wanted his art back.
The Scottsdale Gallery Rodeo had already closed down in 1996, so Reverend Sky tried to get his art from the Beverly Hills gallery. Company reps rarely returned his calls, and when they did, they were evasive about returning his artwork.
Finally, in April, Gallery Rodeo's "shipping department" in Beverly Hills claimed it shipped the 50 Renoir prints to Reverend Sky. But when Reverend Sky opened the package, he says he discovered only two prints, not 50.
When he complained to the gallery's "shipping department," he was told it was his tough luck.
Then, Reverend Sky got kidney stones, he says, because he was so upset. He was so sick he couldn't care for dying people anymore.
In September, Reverend Sky and his two dogs drove to Beverly Hills in his van. He discovered that Gallery Rodeo Beverly Hills was gone. Gallery Rodeo's shipping department turned out to be an auto-detailing shop. The auto detailer/shipper, Larry Colanzo, didn't know where Reverend Sky's art was, said it wasn't his responsibility to find it, and would Reverend Sky please leave his auto-detailing area. Colanzo referred Reverend Sky to Gallery Rodeo in Lake Arrowhead, California, which supposedly handled "resales."
Reverend Sky returned home with nothing.
That's when I called Gallery Rodeo, 10 months after Reverend Sky had started trying to get his art back. After the run-around I got, I can see how Reverend Sky got kidney stones.
Gallery Rodeo International, the parent company of the former Scottsdale gallery, is now a gaming-resort development company based in Colorado.
No one from the Colorado company returned my calls. Not that it matters. The Colorado company has washed its hands of art--its business announcements say the "art department" was "stagnant" and had been "spun out" to the previous management of Gallery Rodeo--the guys who originally sold the missing art to Reverend Sky.
The spun-out art dealers are based in Beverly Hills, but they don't have a gallery anymore. When I finally reached the owner, Steve Thompson, he told me Reverend Sky is a "nut case." He insisted Reverend Sky received his Renoir prints, insisted Reverend Sky's other art is waiting for him.
I'm not so sure.
I rang up Larry Colanzo, the Beverly Hills auto detailer/shipper, to ask whether he'd returned the prints. Colanzo said he shipped Reverend Sky the prints, and if they were missing, that's not his problem.
Then I called the Lake Arrowhead gallery. When I said I was a reporter, owner Ray Hayward said some of Reverend Sky's art had just arrived at his gallery from Beverly Hills--a stunning turn of events.
After I talked to Hayward, Reverend Sky called him. Hayward told the reverend that he'd already lost the newly found art. Last Friday, Hayward said he found it again.
Reverend Sky isn't very hopeful, not after investing his life savings in disappearing artwork.
At this writing, he hasn't gotten any art back.
In the meantime, Reverend Sky is packing his eagle feathers and whatnot in moving cartons.
The Gallery Rodeo experience has taken its toll. You might say Reverend Sky has reached the terminal stage of his investment plan. He's giving up, he's broke, can't afford to keep his house. So, he'll sell it, move to New Mexico, start his life over again. He doesn't want to stay in Phoenix anymore, not after what's happened. He's just too sick, physically and emotionally, to tend the terminally ill.
People dying from AIDS have one less hand to hold.
Contact Terry Greene Sterling at 229-8437, or online at [email protected]
