Today is my Gramma Marker's birthday..she would have been 137 years old. That set me into a little bit of a tizzy wanting to write about her or at least read a bit more about her..much writing has been done in Farm Girl that Karen wrote and then there are more writings that mother preserved that I have in a folder. I just ran across two things in the back of Farm Girl...one an interview done with her by an Omaha Nebraska newspaper in the 1930's and the second a tribute written about her by Willa Cather, the famous author's sister, Jessica Cather Auld.
She did not have an easy life...always on the farm, dealing with lots and lots of snakes that she said plagued her from the time she was in a cradle in their sod house until she left the farm for a nursing home in 1962. I always liked her...very gentle soul, didn't talk much but very kind. She always made horehound candy for us when she would visit using some of the horehound from her farm in Nebraska. It's nice to have her writings and paintings to bring her a little more to life for me.
Interview with the World Omaha newspaper and my grandmother Julia O’Lava Walstad Marker
"Mrs. Julia Marker, whose four hundred acre farm in the middle of Nebraska hasn't produced a spear of grass since 1932, painted her way out of the Depression.
Today, Mrs. Marker is proud to announce that her crop of pictures exceeds one thousand, that they have gone to every state in the union and her household budget is balanced.
'We have not had a blade of green grass here for five years, Mrs. Marker said, so I had to do something. I borrowed a painting and copied it. Since then I have made as many as three oil paintings a day. I send hundreds to stores in Minnesota. I also exchange paintings for embroidery work, quilt tops, oranges from Florida, salmon from Washington, dates from California and also turkeys from the state of Iowa.'
Mrs. Marker said she gets up early in the morning to paint and is often still working at midnight. She never tires, she says, because she loves to paint. She never had any formal art education.
'Only when the dust blows too hard, I have to stop, she explained. I tried to paint in a dust storm but had to give it up, although I was indoors.'
'Sometimes I copy snapshots of animals, Mrs. Marker said. Something I just copy a picture out for the paper. My favorite picture is "Dog and Lamb", which I painted in 1934. I also like the one I made of two cranes standing in a stream of water with water lilies in front. (that one is in possession of Julie Jones Bucknam) I think a picture is more complete with a deer, a dog, bird, or some animal in it.'
Mrs. Marker's ambition is to paint a large church mural. 'The next time I get an order for a church painting, she said, I am going to paint a picture of Bethlehem. I want to do a large canvas with lots of color and life. I know I can.' (I am not aware if that ever happened)
The middle-aged woman who took up painting in lieu of potato planting, makes all her own frames. She augments her income of oil paintings with what she earns from plaster plaques and painting of velvet.
Tribute to Julia Marker written by Jessica Cather, Auld, Willa Cather's sister
Julia Marker 1882-1964
"She was born of Norwegian parents who came to the United States from Norway during the 1870's to take up land under the homestead settling act. The Walstad family acquired homestead sites near Campbell, Nebraska, and it was here the two Walstad girls were born and grew up. Mathilde and Julia were brought up much the same as all the farm girls of that time and locality were. Brought up to work diligently both inside the house with its many duties and to help outside when needed. But they differed a bit in their outlook. In fact Julia differed from most all of the girls in that part of the country at that time. She saw the hills and dales, the flowers and birds in their beauty and put it down somehow to keep. She wanted to paint them, to write about them and about happenings in her life.
Well, it so happened that while her sister Mathilde was working in the home of some very fine people in the nearby town of Riverton, a young artist came to visit there and in cleaning his room she saw his works and all his utensils, his studies and instructions. My how she wanted the instructions for Julia, so while he was out, she copied them and brought them to Julia on her next visit home. So with the purchase of paints and brushes her art lessons began and on paper and canvas she caught the colors of the sunrise and sunsets, the sunflower and the goldenrod, and all the beauties of the Great Plains.
She dared to open doors and go through and do the things that stirred within her; do them by herself though she might be jeered for doing them, jeered, not cheered, for to many this seemed a waste of time. Her friends thought her a bit peculiar. But as Will Rogers said, 'Why, friends, we are all peculiar, only in different ways.' Yes, even the best of artistic people have been thought peculiar at one time or other. I can well remember when Robert Frost was thought very peculiar and his poems adversely criticized, especially his 'The Death of the Hired Man.' But he kept on writing what was in his heart and finally it crept into the hearts of others.
As Allen Tait, a fine poet and literary critic said, 'Robert Frost helped us to see the old things in a new way in a new light.' This is what Julia Marker tried to do - just to see the old things, the common things in a new light, as she saw them in her heart,."
I am grateful for the entreprenual determination and grit that this grandmother of mine in her quiet, humble way demonstrated. When life gets tough, I love to think of her, doing whatever she could do to survive and didn't complain.
