Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I’ve been teaching writing, and lately, blogging –  in one form or another for more than 20 years.

Rachel Barlow has been my student for six of those years, and I can say without any hesitation she has been and is the most gifted and productive and authentic  student I have ever had, or probably ever will have.

Rachel and I have been through many permutations with one another. She is an artist, a writer, a blogger, an author. There is absolutely nothing she can not do and do brilliantly, despite dealing with bipolar disorder and sometimes severe and debilitating depression.

She is both impulsive and obsessive, two traits that inspire her prodigious talent.

Through dark and awful days and winters,  Rachel always shows up, she is always working on another book, another sketch, another painting, another blog post, another watercolor (a couple of weeks ago she took up oils, and they are lovely, see above.)

Rachel is a rock star, a hero. She is a triumph of will, talent, and the power of creativity to heal and ground. She openly writes about those moments when she nearly gave up on it all, her sickness was so severe, but I never saw her stop creating, turn mean or hurt another soul.

I’ve never seen  her whine or pity herself. She overcomes pain every day, and if that is not heroism, I don’t know what it.

This week, a big step forward: She’s on Etsy.

She has dealt with many difficult challenges in her life, apart from her depression.

Her husband Chris was gravely ill E, her oldest son Mac is struggling with a severe colitis. Although her moods sometimes swing wildly, Rachel is a rock, she never gives up or surrenders to life or her mental illness, lets is slow her great gifts.

Rachel can sometimes be her own worst enemy.

She thinks she knows nothing, and is almost addicted to gurus and creative workshops and other people’s ideas. She even pays people who know much less than she knows for their advice. Fortunately, she rarely takes it.

She has a genius for multi-tasking. Sometimes, when Rachel comes to my class, she is working in her other job as a tech support counselor, (she needs the health plan) and once I remember she was offering feedback on a piece of writing while giving instructions to a panicked customer about how to unfreeze a computer. She handles both at once.

Once in a while she listens to me, and I believe our creative work together has helped ground her and keep her focused, although Rachel needs no one’s help to do brilliant work almost every day of her life.

She has absolutely no idea how talented she is, of course, and is forever seeking guidance and direction, I always tell her she  should be the student, not the pupil.

Rachel and I know one another quite well by now, we have seen each other at our best and worst and stayed connected.

I have a deep admiration and respect for her, her work and her life, even though I have wanted to strangle her one or two times, as she leaps from one project to another, almost without interruption.

Over these years, the range and quality of her work is nothing less than astonishing. Although she is constantly looking for work that is more secure for her and her family, I believe it is her destiny to create, and I believe this creativity will sustain and guide her.

First the blog, then the sketches, then the watercolors and the books, then the cartoons, and now the oils. All of them beautiful clever, powerful, funny and haunting. (A couple of her oils will be for sale  in our October Open House on Columbus Day Weekend.)

She is always trying something new, doing something new. It is always wonderful. Rachel cannot ultimately be taught, only guided like a wondrous balloon in the wind.

This week, she has opened up a Rachel Barlow store on Etsy. I had no idea it was coming.

She is migrating some of her  remarkable works there, the rest can be seen on her very beautiful blog. Since she has no idea how good she is, she is almost incapable of charging much for her work, a reflection of self-esteem issues, not  talent.

That is good news for the growing number Rachel Barlow fans.

Rachel has a lot of personal meaning for me. I can’t really imagine or remember a time when she was not in my life and I hope the day never comes when she isn’t.

Congratulations star pupil, on your new Etsy page.

No one deserves success more than you do.

Maria showed me this quilt, her new-work-in-progress, this afternoon, and I have to confess it knocked my socks off a bit.

This is a goddess with some punch, and the detail and inventiveness and symbolism really struck me in a new and different way.

I asked Maria what it was about and she wasn’t sure, she had this thought before she started working on it that the people in her life who had made her suffer and treated her poorly did not have to die for  her to be free, she can be free any time she chooses to be free.

“You don’t have to die for me to be free,” she thought.

I am by no means unbiased when it comes to Maria’s work but it has been one of the joys of my life to see her evolution as a brilliant artist with such a strong  feminist point of view. When I look at this goddess, I get a chill, and also a lift.

The detail her is just incredible to me, a very original and unique piece of work.

You don’t have to die to be free, and Maria is now free. You would have to be to create a piece like that, yes?

This piece began as an expression of that, and I think it is  reflected in the energy and detail of this quilt, which is unfinished and not quite yet for sale. If you have any questions or comments about it, you can e-mail her at [email protected]. She doesn’t sell her quilts on  Etsy but off of her blog.

Ed Gulley was always a major presence in my life in the time that I knew him. I saw him almost every day in the four months between his diagnosis and his death.

He died a couple of weeks ago, and after the funeral my life has gotten frantic, especially with the fund-raising campaign to send the refugee Sakler Moo, a member of the refugee soccer team I sponsor,  to the Albany Academy.

That work with Sakler and some of the other refugees has kept me running back and forth to Albany and I guess I haven’t had time to think of Ed much.

I text or call Carol every day and check on her, and we have had her over to dinner. Right now, I think she wants to be alone and needs to be alone. Maria and I want to stay in close touch with her, we also want to give her the space she needs.

This morning, it was very warm and I got up to water our two new Paper Burch trees. I was standing next to one tree, and lookedto the right and saw Ed Gulley’s Goose sculpture one of his best and one of his last.

Suddenly, Ed’s loss seemed to hit me right in the heart. We always loved Ed’s art works, Maria was so involved in his creating them. They are all over our farm, wooden flowers, wind chimes, the Tin Man.

He is a difficult presence to replace, a great and buoyant spirit, and I miss him. It hasn’t quite sunk in that I will never see him again. The Goose brings me back to the Ed Gulley I want to remember, the one who built a bridge to our back woods and hauled it down the pasture on his back. The Ed Gulley who built a bench for us to sit on by the stream.

The Ed Gulley who came to our Open Houses, sold his farm art and lectured everyone he meet about the need to drink whole milk and raise the price farmers get paid for it. His milk lecture.

We got a great kick out of each other, he respected my mind greatly and relished our talks, and so did I. This almost always puzzled me, we were so different, yet so much alike.

I was not comfortable at the County Fair, looking at the lovely memorial his family built to him in one of the cow. I just felt sad, it was not the same as Ed, and I can hardly imagine what Carol was feeling.

I think the Goose shows how skillful Ed was at bringing animals and nature into his art, using tractor and other farm parts to give his work it’s authenticity and feeling. The Goose was largely made of blades from a hay chopper, Ed never quite got the legs right so I had to prop the Goose up with a wooden board.

He was so close to the natural world, and to the mystery of animals. When Ed was diagnosed he told me he finally felt free, to leave behind the hard world of the dairy farmer and work on his art. For a week or so, he worked furiously on his art, and then he couldn’t. That was the heartbreaking part, in one sense.

The Goose seems serious and dignified to me, I love seeing it out there by the road, it can  honk at anybody it chooses to honk at.

There it shall stay.

Everybody has their own ideas about the afterlife and heaven, I would love to believe in both but mostly do not. Ed had his time on the earth, and I have mine, and I see no reason why we would all live on forever in one way or another. Who promised me that?

Heaven would be more crowded than Manhattan  is at rush hour. Do I really want to hang out with all of those people?

Ed told me he would come down and talk to me from time to time, but I don’t think he’s been down here yet.

It was my job to tell Ed’s story as he lay dying, that was what he asked of me. It is my job now to try to remember him in a meaningful way. The Goose is my contact point, my channel with Ed. If he is up there, the Goose will let me know.

As it is, she (or he) is a great comfort to me, dignified and grateful and rusty like an ancient tractor.

How you doing, Ed. A tough son-of-a-bitch you be, you got two rows of tits on either s–i–i–i–d–e.

Ed tried to teach me this line a hundred times, but I could never get it right while he was alive. Ever since he died, I  get it right every time.

Maybe we are talking to each other.

It is in the 90’s today, hot and humid. Still, I am learning towards autumn, the light is changing, the sun is weakening, the garden is beginning to fade in depth and color. A few flowers remain strong and vibrant, and I am grateful for them.

Sometimes, the barn cats look to me as if they are in prayer, as they sit on our porch, taking in the sun. Barn cats are a fascinating contradiction to me, murderous and affectionate, solitary and spiritual, independent yet somehow attached to their home and people.

This morning, I stood still with Flo for a few minutes while she sad on our back bench in prayer.