Fate is a very happy dog everywhere she goes, but she is happiest running around the sheep and tearing through the deep woods. She loves to vanish and the re-appear, bringing us large sticks she hopes we will throw. Sometimes we do, sometimes you don’t. With border collies you have to be careful, one time is fun, two times an addiction that never goes away. I think Fate is a dog who could happily live in the woods year round, she is hardy enough, smart enough and fast enough.
I very much love taking photographs like this, capturing moments like this, hearing the wheels turning in Ed’s head as he look up at the remarkable and imposing works of artist Nick Cave.
Ed and I are similar in many ways, although on the surface we could not be more different.Neither of us makes friends easily, we both have had complicated family histories and difficult mothers, but there are artists inside of each of us who want to come out.
I admire Ed, his honest and hard-working and gifted. He is freeing the spirits inside of him, and it is exciting to see it happen.
Ed is a dairy farmer, and he lives farming every minute of every day. It is hard work that he loves and around it, he is making time for his art. After we went to Mass MoCa, he went back to the farm and made a new sculpture, “The Serpent” out of stuff he found on his farm. All of his artworks are literally made from pieces of real farms, his and others.
He will put “The Serpent” up for sale on his blog, if he hasn’t already. He and Carol post photos, videos and stories on their Farm Journal every day, if you are interested in capturing the real feeling and emotion of a working farm, there is no better place to star.
We are excited about Ed and Carol’s plans to host a tour and art show at the Bejosh Farm during the weekend of our October Open House. Ed might even bring one of his sweetest cows, Sweet Sally, over to our farm for the weekend.
Ed didn’t talk much about the things he was seeing at Mass MoCa, but the wheels were turning and I think that is clear in this photo. Check out their remarkable blog here.
It was Maria’s idea to invite Ed and Carol Gulley to see the Nick Cave exhibit at Mass MoCa in North Adams, Mass. These two run their dairy farm seven days a week, and each day is long and hard. It is rare for them to be able to take time off, but Maria has been something of a mentor to Ed, one artist to another, and Ed often talks with her about his ideas and the ways in which he executes them.
Ed and I have become friends, and I have encouraged him to launch a blog, the Bejosh Farm Journal, that is now very successful. He is selling more and more of his farm art there, especially his wind chimes and animal sculptures. Museums are not a regular part of Ed’s life, I suspect, but he was sure wide-eyed at Cave’s colorful work and use of forms and tools.
We both thought he might find the brilliant and very dramatic dance and sculptor artist Nick Cave interesting, Ed makes his chimes and farm sculptures out of the thousands of artifacts, tools and engine parts he has collected over the years, and are now filling three big barns.
Ed loves farm, but he also loves making his art and is finding the time to do. Check out the Gulley’s blog, it is red host.
Watching Ed, he was taking everything in, he was dazzled by Cave, I think. We talked about his hosting his own art show on his farm during our October Open House, he volunteered to offer a tour of his dairy farm, it is better than Disney World there, I can testify to that.
It was lovely to see Mass MoCa with Carol and Ed we were there for about two hours and we were all a bit stunned by all the beautiful things we see. I have talked to a lot of people about creativity over the years, but never seen anyone open up to it the way Ed has, the gifted artist in him just came roaring out, he tries to be gruff and farmer-like, his work is sensitive and touching.
We just got another beautiful wind chime for our porch. I took this photo in the big exhibit hall at the Nick Cave exhibit with the Petsval 58 lens, as difficult as it is to use, I like the way it picks up color and blurs backgrounds. I like the way Ed stands out in the middle of it.
The hall showing Nick Cave’s quite astonishing exhibit “Until,” is a riot of color and art, it looked like Maria was dancing with the colors in the vast hall – you can hardly see the end of it. I took this shot with my Petzval 58 lens. Maria is in a trance when we walk through museums, people sometimes ask if she’s all right, but she is fine, she just gets lost in it, very happily.
Elizabeth Small’s exhibit “Radical Small” was in a darkened gallery in the vast former mill that is not Mass MoCa, one of the most innovative and interesting museums I have seen. Maria does not pose for photos, but I am free to take them as I wish, that is our agreement with one another, and I looked across the room and saw that sometimes, an artist looking at art is a work of art all its own – the reflections, the intensity, the interaction of the images.
