C. Carey Cloud » Articles » C. Carey Cloud - Artist and Entrepreneur

C. Carey Cloud - Artist and Entrepreneur
     by Joanne Nesbit
     Brown County Democrat
     April, 1996

"I probably could have obtained greater financial reward had I chosen to live in New York, but I attained a greater spiritual reward by choosing to live among my trees on my hills."

Familiar with Brown County through years of spending summer vacations there, it just seemed natural that C. Carey Cloud would move his family to a hilltop just south of Nashville - the former home of painter Adolph Shulz.

But the years of the nation’s depression took their toll on Brown County, too, and the Cloud family was forced to leave the hills they loved. They never forgot Brown County, and in 1947, went back leaving Chicago to purchase "the highest hill one mile south of the Village of Nashville, consisting of 195 acres."

Life In the hills was decidedly different from what the artist and his family had been accustomed to in Chicago. In his book "Cloud Nine," Cloud noted, "When I arrive In Brown County the county seat of Nashville, population around 750, had no water system (unless you could call the courthouse pump a system), poor telephone service, no sewers, and a log jail, built of double logs for tight security. However, I was told that in the early days, a prisoner might be given the keys at night so he could get out in case of fire."

When C. Carey Cloud returned to Brown County, he also brought a new industry to neighboring Morgantown.

He and his son Harold leased a building there to house Cloudcrest Creations, a company producing advertising novelties and specialties. One of the firm’s major accounts was the Cracker Jack Company. For more than 12 years prior to opening his Morgantown facility, Cloud’s firm had been creating and producing the prizes found in the boxes of Cracker Jacks; producing about 30 million prizes each year. The creations were the result of Carey Cloud’s imagination. Harold headed up the production end of the family business.

"It Is impossible," Cloud wrote In his book, "to recite the list of different kinds of playthings I produced for Cracker Jack over the years: tin toys, cardboard toys, twirlies, countless games, optical illusions, minute movies, millions upon millions of whistles, tops of every description, and an assortment of plastic figurines are all Included... My estimate is that I created, produced, and delivered to the Cracker Jack Company 700 million toys. Add to this record the toys and premiums I designed for other companies, and the total would climb to one billion."

C. Carey Cloud, an Indiana native, was basically a self-taught artist who at times had worked in an advertising agency, been an art director for a calendar company and a greeting card publisher. He painted his Brown County surroundings and neighbors in oils, acrylics and watercolors.

Once asked when he decided to be an artist, Cloud answered, "I never decided to be an artist. I couldn’t have refrained from it. I was Imbued with the spirit when born; I was destined to be a creative artist."

And why did he decide to settle In Brown County? "I probably could have obtained greater financial reward had I chosen to live in New York," Cloud wrote, "But I attained a greater spiritual reward by choosing to live among my trees on my hills."