“Happy Little Trees” at Minnetrista

Lucius L. Ball, his wife Sarah, and their daughter Helen used the room to the left of the entrance to their home as a parlor. It is now used by Minnetrista as a classroom and meeting space. During the 1980s, though, the room had a much different function.  It was a recording studio for WIPB, the local public broadcasting station, and starting in February 1984, Bob Ross of “happy little trees” fame produced The Joy of Painting in that room.

Ross didn’t have a connection with WIPB before it was selected as one of seven stations to air the first episodes of the series. He was so impressed with the station and its crew on his first visit, however, that he decided to move the production of his show from Falls Church, Virginia to Muncie. From 1984 until the 1990s, Ross visited Muncie four times a year to tape his show, first at Minnetrista then in the Edmund F. Ball Communication Building at Ball State University. 

Untitled Landscape by Bob Ross with Edmund F. Ball,1991

“What you see is what you get,” Ross said about The Joy of Painting. “There is no ‘video magic’ to the show, no retakes, and no editing.” Ross had exactly 27 minutes to finish a painting in each show. If he didn’t, the entire show had to be re-shot. That almost never happened.

In 1991, Minnetrista developed an original exhibit titled Bob Ross: The Joy Behind the Painting, which featured paintings done by both Ross and his followers. A paint-in taught by Ross attracted several hundred enthusiastic local devotees. At the opening reception, Ross called on Edmund F. Ball to paint with him. Knowing that Ball was an avid aviator, Ross finished off the painting with an airplane in the upper left hand corner. That painting is now a part of the Minnetrista Heritage Collection as are several of Ross’s own paintings.

 Button distributed to participants at the Bob Ross Paint In, 1991.