FLINT, MI – Cyndi Delmage needed some downtime at times.
“Having five kids in a two-bedroom apartment, we would develop drawing games, so they don’t make noise,” she chuckled. “One piece of paper and a pencil. No talking to each other, pass the paper, draw one line.”
The children, including Ryon Gonzalez, would create a frog, flower or airplane.
“They’d laugh about it because nobody said anything and it was like they would read each other minds,” Delmage told MLive-The Flint Journal.
Years later, Gonzalez was at home with his sister Sharon who was eating some corn on the cob.
“They would look at each other and know what they’re thinking,” said Delmage, with Sharon handing him the corn. “He starts spinning it in his mouth. There was one row of corn left because of the one tooth he was missing.”
It’s moments like that or her son dancing and signing happy birthday to a friend from atop a vehicle that Delmage is holding onto after Gonazlez, who also went by the artist name “Teck,” was hit and killed by a vehicle Oct. 8 on Ballenger Highway, between 12th Street and Miller Road.
Gonzalez -- whose tags and artwork dot the city’s landscape -- was 33 years old.
Ryon Gonzalez (Photo courtesy of Cyndi Delmage)
Delmage remembered her son began to show an interest in art roughly 30 years earlier.
“He never really drew stick figures. He was just straight to ninja turtles,” she said. “His older brother drew them as a kid.”
A native of southwest Detroit, Gonzalez’s family moved to Lapeer when he was around 13 years old -- when he put up a mural at Hart Plaza -- and began to get in trouble.
It was four months later, his parents split.
Gonzalez began to get into trouble at school, with Delmage adding “He started to cry every day for his dad.”
He went back to Detroit and wound up living with his grandmother.
Gonzales moved back to Lapeer a few years a later.
It was at Lapeer West High School that Gonzalez was called upon by art teacher Jeanine Smith to put up a mural.
“He’s very, very artistic,” Smith said in an April 2003 Flint Journal article. “I just wish I could get him to do more on canvas.”
“Get me a 7-foot canvas, and I’ll do it,” said a 16-year-old Gonzalez, who pointed out in the same article it was difficult to make friends.
“At first, they judged me by the clothes I had, and I don’t want to be labeled a thug,” he said. “I prefer the city more.”
Gonzalez was later expelled from school for selling marijuana and headed back to Detroit before later dropping out.
Delmage said her son “started hanging out with the wrong group” and ended up in jail at one point.
The experience, Delmage said, was a turning point for Gonzalez.
While he would still have an occasional run-in with police, Gonzalez changed his circle and began to dig deeper into his artistic endeavors.
“He would tell me and send me pictures (of his work). He’s like I’ve got this going on and I’ve got that going on,” said Delmage of his different pieces. “He always told me, ‘One day, I’m going to make you proud of me.’”
Seeing her son’s pieces, Delmage pointed out: “I was always stunned.”
“My ex-husband and I are very artistic, but not even close (to him), not even near what he developed,” she noted. “He just took the little bit that we showed him, and he ran hog wild with it.”
Gonzalez’s mural of an astronaut holding a flower is painted on a building next to Sicily’s Pizza near the intersection of Saginaw Street and Atherton Road on Flint’s south side as well as a mural near Martin Luther King Avenue and Pasadena Avenue dedicated to a COVID-19 victim.
“How do you look at something and just put it out there in five seconds, it seemed like,” explained Delmage. “What would take me a year to do, he would do in 15 minutes. He just had it. It was a God-given gift.”
Kobie Solomon, of Detroit, had gotten to know Gonzalez over the past decade.
“I was never affiliated with a crew of any kind, so I was unaffected by drama most of the time, so I got along with him,” said Solomon at a recent vigil. “He was always talented. A couple other Detroit writers I know, Sintex and Fel3000ft, they both spoke really, really, highly of him. (They’d say) man, he’s one to watch.”
While Gonzalez would often put up artwork to have a good time, Solomon noted it began to lead to a career path.
“His most recent work, he was doing world-class level work,” said Solomon. "He was definitely on the ascent.
When asked to describe his friend’s style, Solomon couldn’t pinpoint it.
“I would say that it was evolving rapidly because there was no way to define it,” Solomon said. "He was doing tattoos and there’s drawing and illustrative work that goes into doing tattoos, it’s a completely different process.
“His street work went from being straight tags… to full blown murals to throwing in a character here and there to this Halloween stuff that he’s doing now that was straight horror show. It was dope,” exclaimed Solomon. “You could go to Miami and paint at the (Art) Basel with that level. Talk about his style, he hadn’t even found it yet. That’s the sad thing. You could see, by looking at his progression, he was just about to hit that point.”
Solomon said it’s unfortunate his friend’s artistic contributions to Flint were cut short.
“I really think, especially with the city’s position right now, he was representing the city well,” said Solomon, with Gonzalez having worked on some murals for the Flint Public Art Project. "He was an integral part to this art resurgence that’s happening right now here.
“The ripple effects of him doing that, you can’t even calculate it,” explained Solomon. “It’s going to help change parts of the city, it’s going to make people’s lives better. People who don’t even know him got robbed. Fate’s funny like that.”
Delmage also recalled her son’s giving nature, helping others in even the most dangerous scenarios.
“One time they were at a Quinceanera in Detroit,” she said. “This friend Charles was standing outside and got shot in the legs. Ryan took off and grabbed him, running through these bullets everywhere.”
Gonzalez also helped to revive a friend who’d overdosed.
“He was such a caring and loving and giving person,” said Delmage, taking his children Jayden, 11, and Caleb, 7, skateboarding on the weekends while maintaining his jovial nature. “He wouldn’t think twice. He would save a life before he thought of his own. He was an amazing person, he really was. I’m proud to say that he was my son.”
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