Emery Blagdon and His Healing Machine

TERRI YOHO: The pictures of Emery as a young man are pretty conventional.

He looks like a sweet attractive American boy.

ROGER NETH: He was pretty ordinary except for that machine.

The healing machine.

And that was something all together different.

DAN DRYDEN: He opened the door, flipped on some light switches, and this rainbow of colored lights came on.

I've never seen anything like it before or since.

CONNIE PAXTON: He truly believed that the energy made people feel better and I think that he really wanted people to feel better because he'd experienced so much pain in his life.

NETH: He was gonna build that machine and nobody was gonna stop him and that was it.

And that was his obsession.

I don't think anybody can ever understand it, but him.

And I don't know if he understood it.

SHARI CAVIN: There are any number of people who don't call their work, "art," but when we look at it, we perceive it that way.

We've taken it a bit out of the context of the shed and just by calling it art, we've altered it slightly.

We've given it our spin.

LESLIE UMBERGER: Emery Blagdon's work offers this understanding that any individual can transform his or her entire world just by the desire to do so.

It's a powerful experience.

It's a powerful thing to understand that you have that power to change your whole reality.

Music (Seaside sounds) LESLIE UMBERGER: At the John Michael Koehler Art Center, we have a particular focus in the work of vernacular environment builders.

We are very lucky to have in our collection the primary body of work that Emery Blagdon did that comprised his art environment, the Healing Machine.

In the 1970's and 1980's, I think it was becoming increasingly understood that important valid artistic production wasn't always coming out of the predictable places.

And it was being understood that American culture and history was actually embodied in work that knew nothing other than itself.

It's what has led increasingly to the recognition and appreciation of folk and self-taught and vernacular art.

And the body of work that Emery Blagdon made certainly falls into this category.

Certain things had to fall in place before people were able to understand it for something as important as it is.

The work of vernacular environment builders is very often saved by the hair of its chin by one individual that happened to be in the right place at the right time who happened to understand how special it was.

Like the person who ended up saving this body of work who really began to understand by walking into the healing machine that wonder and beauty and changing your daily life is really something worth doing.

You never know what you've lost if you don't have it, but when we look at what Emery Blagdon did and explored the depth and the devotion and intricate ways in which it embodies, you know, America at a particular place in time, it would have been a real loss to everybody.

(Wind) Emery Blagdon was born in 1907 in Callaway, Nebraska, a small town out by the Garfield Table.

He was from a large family and was greatly loved and remembered as a really kind and generous person who was engaged with the family in a lot of ways while definitely not feeling beholding to follow a traditional path through school or into farming or some of the other pursuits that had characterized the family.

I think that Emery realized as a young man that school was not going to be a place that held his interest very much.

CONNIE PAXTON: He went to the eighth grade, but he did not finish his eighth grade education.

School was always kind of a distraction for him, as for many of the boys of that time, you know that expectation of helping with the farm and doing those kinds of things.

It just was not something that held his attention for long periods of time.

As a young man, he worked for the A.J.

Tracy Ranch.

He helped them stack hay and he also worked at a sawmill north of North Platte.

As a young man, he traveled a lot.

He went to the west coast.

He worked in the goldfields and he also worked in a sawmill there.

He came back home in the late 1920's.

UMBERGER: When Emery found out that his mother was ill, he returned right away to help take care of her.

I think that that was a very big um challenge in his life and that he was greatly impacted by watching her suffer and um within a decade later, seeing his father suffer a similar fate.

PAXTON: His mother died at a very young age from stomach cancer.

And then his dad died from a blood clot as a result of surgery for lung cancer.

All of his siblings, with the exception of his sister Ethyl, died from cancer.

Those things really did affect him deeply and he wanted people to feel better.

He wanted to make a difference and to kind of help relieve that pain.

UMBERGER: This idea of illness and suffering and human helplessness in the face of that was something that I think profoundly influenced him and he began to really devote his life to thinking about how that could maybe different or how the power of the earth could really be brought to bear in making a difference.

PAXTON: He called it "his pretties."

He believed it had a healing power, but I-he really called it "his pretties."

It started out as just a way to pass his time and then it became a passion and then I think it became his obsession.

Working with his hands was something he just loved doing.

Cutting out those intricate pieces, working with wire and he loved to paint, model car paint or paint-by-number sets and he would use those paints to paint on wood that he'd found out in the barn or that someone had thrown away.

He liked going to farm auctions and buying old TVs and radios and car parts that he could take apart and then create things for the healing machine.

ROGER NETH: Nothing went to waste.

If he, you know, if he could use it, he'd do it, you know.

And uh, I can still see him sitting at the table, you know, and he's sitting there.

He'd have those needle-nose pliers and working on that wire and working on that stuff, you know, and he had the, you know, talk to him, you know, and yeah, yeah he'd talk, you know, and uh he was just, just an ordinary guy really except for the-except like I said for that machine.

I mean if we'd go out hunting and stuff, he was just like just like one of the boys, just like one of your friends, you know.

DAN DRYDEN: Emery came into my pharmacy in 1975.

I was taken aback by his appearance because I didn't see people like that in the drug store.

So he came to the counter and he looked me right in the eyes and he said, I'd like to buy some elements.

Then he started telling me about his work and his machines.

I had a lot of training in chemistry and physics and physiology and science in general and he had a layman's interest in those things and he explained to me that these were energy fields and that they affected physiology in some way that he didn't know.

So that was enough for me to be curious about what was going on.

PAXTON: I spent a lot of time with my Uncle Emery.

We would ride our bikes up to his house.

He would fix our tires.

He would show you things that he had on the table.

He'd show you something new he had under the microscope or we'd take a trip out to the shop to look at his work.

When you first opened the door to the healing machine, you walk into his workshop and you would step into a dirt floor um so you'd get that kind of musty just walking into the garage type feeling.

There'd be a few pieces sitting on the floor that didn't fit into the machine at the moment.

And then, he would unlock the door to the healing machine and first you could hear it-- (Tinkling noises) Things are starting to move around in there and he flicked on that light switch and it'd just come alive!

DRYDEN: And this rainbow of colored lights came on.

Some of them were blinking.

Some of em were not.

And they were all reflecting off of these bits of tin foil and copper wire... Music (Tinkling Noises) and I've never seen anything like it before or since.

It-He had me.

Music (Tinkling Noises) NETH: And he put his hand out like that, you know.

He'd say-put his hand out like that, he had big old hands.

And he'd say, hey he says, he says, can you feel that magnetic field?

PAXTON: What I remember feeling was that this cool breeze comes up underneath, and it just sends chills up your back.

I mean it's a hundred degrees outside, but it's always cool in there and I remember feeling that really cool sensation.

It was just incredible.

And the look on his face, you know, I think I will always remember his eyes.

He had beautiful steel blue eyes and when you looked at him, it was like looking into the eyes of a child.

And when he talked to you, you knew that what he was telling you, he truly believed.

UMBERGER: I think that belief is a really important factor for Emery too.

The fact that you are convinced that you believe and that belief is like a part of your physical body chemistry.

And he did talk from time-to-time, trying to, you know, articulate why it worked.

He said, he tried to respond to the tides, the phases of the moon, or just what energies he happened to be feeling on any particular day.

And when put very simply, why does it work, his response was "I don't know, but it works."

PAXTON: I did hear talk of Emery's work, you know, it didn't meet the social norm of the time.

And it was difficult for people to understand.

They felt it was a waste of his time.

And his appearance too was a bit undaunting for the time.

We all have different appearances and it's not a big deal, but in a small rural community, it does stand out.

NETH: Well, he wasn't a recluse.

The people that knew him, they knew how he was.

They just knew that's just the way he was.

Now he never-he never took a bath.

You know, I says Emery, why don't you take a bath?

And oh he says, I don't believe in it.

He says, that's where I get a lot of my power from.

(chuckle) When he went to town, he always put on a pair of overalls that were new, you know, and he'd always take em off when he got home.

So he had them on and he had his old hat on and he wanted to go to KNOP-TV, so I-I really didn't want to stop in there, but he-he kept at me.

We were on our way to North Platte to get some stuff.

And he kept at me and kept at me and I said, well, I'm gonna pull in there and let you go.

So I said, I'm not going up there to the door.

I see it was later on, they-they did come up and interview him.

JODI RITACCA: He used to be a farmer, but now he's an artist.

Even an inventor of sorts, he creates unusual artwork from junk.

All those wires and foil creates static electricity according to Emery.

However, the day that we were there, we weren't able to feel any of the static.

Emery says, it depends a lot on the phase of the moon.

He thinks of himself as an inventor rather than an artist.

JODI RITACCA: You call it a scientific work instead of an artwork, why is that?

EMORY: Well, I don't know.

Science, you gotta have science before you do anything with it.

Music PAXTON: He lived with cancer for-for quite some time.

You know, it first started his lip split open and then you could-the cancer progressed.

It became harder for him to eat.

Harder for him to talk and he had that for a long, long time.

Probably five, ten years.

NETH: I know he had that uh place on his lip, you know, and it worried me quite a bit.

And I tried to get him to go to doctors and stuff and he wouldn't.

No way you could get him to go to a doctor.

CONNIE PAXTON: Well, I think you know his trust in the medical field was very shaken.

All of the people that he loved, even though they'd sought medical attention, had not really met with a very good outcome.

He worked on the machine right up until the last three or four months of his life and then he just wasn't able to go out to the shop.

He still did a few things in the house, but then the shop was locked and he didn't go back out again.

Music (City traffic noise) DAN DRYDEN: Emery taught me to follow your dream.

In a rural area where one might be so exposed to perhaps criticism or at least curiosity about eccentric behavior, he appeared to care nothing about it and just carried on with his life doing what he wanted to do, so that was-that was the lesson.

Music Music Well, I'd been living in New York for several years, and in 1986, my old friend Don Christenson and I decided to go do a class reunion in North Platte.

We drove out to Emery's place and there was nobody home and his nephew, Gary, lived next door.

Gary told us that Emery had died a few weeks earlier.

And we learned that he hadn't left a will and everything was in probate and up for auction.

PAXTON: Everything was set up for an auction.

Um, all of the things from his house, including the shed and "his pretties."

My grandma and Emery were very close and they had talked, you know, not about what would happen to it when it was done, but my grandma didn't want to just see it thrown away and burned to the ground or thrown in the trash.

She was bidding against Dan Dryden.

He was the only other bidder.

And she run the bid up and then at that point, she really felt like Dan was in a better position to maybe take care of it.

She just allowed him to buy it.

DRYDEN: The gavel came down in our favor.

So after ten, eleven years of absence, it's hard to explain how you can- the only thing I can say about it is "the work found us."

We didn't know what we were gonna find when we started really inspecting it.

It was intimidating.

I mean there was a lot of material in there.

The whole shed was lined with nails and then hanging from that would be foil and little vials of earth elements wired up into the things, you know, the materials that I gave him were incorporated.

As we would take a piece off, it would be mapped in order of where it came from and so we ended up with a catalog of all of the components of this in a map to their reassembly.

We put together a sixty-piece gallery exhibit.

Meanwhile, we were continued to talk to people and tried to get the word out.

We had taken care of it.

We'd exhibited it.

We'd promoted it.

And it needed to have the next step.

And that required an institution with more resources than we had.

SHARI CAVIN: They came to me and said, we have been caretakers for this incredible body of work for- it had to have been I think probably 18 years at that point.

And they-they realized it was time for them to let it go and they wanted to place it with an institution.

And I said, well let's try this.

The first showing of the work was in the gallery.

We had a grouping of paintings and sculpture.

There was an article written by Edward Gomez.

It appeared in the Sunday Times and it caused a sensation.

The article brought people in literally in droves.

And I think what compelled people, aside from how exquisitely beautiful the work was, it's-there's something very compelling about work that's made only for the purpose of doing good.

And shortly thereafter the Koehler Foundation stepped forward and purchased the entire remaining environment and gifted it to John Michael Koehler Art Center.

So it was a very, very happy ending.

TERRI YOHO: The bulk of our hands-on work is in the area of art preservation and then making gifts of that art to museums across the country.

We spent a good two years working on the Emery Blagdon project pretty much full-time.

When Emery Blagdon's work was being conserved, we had to call in a number of experts.

If you noticed on some of the chandeliers, for instance, there were little glass vials and Emery would go Dan Dryden at the pharmacy and purchase elements.

He would take elements from his pantry.

Because this was going to be displayed in a public forum, all those materials needed to have chemical analysis because we had to make sure there was nothing toxic.

To describe Emery Blagdon's art, I think is to talk about how many pieces there are and how difficult it is to take an environment, to dismember it, understand it, count it, photograph it, document it.

It's a totally immersion experience.

LESLIE UMBERGER: I think that my first response to Blagdon's work was powerfully emotional and I-I let that be a guide in territorial work in general.

What causes the change in your brain and makes you want to see more and know more and really experience it on a deeper level.

One of the reasons why we did the installation in this particular way was to let people see his dense installation and kind of understand that this was a place.

And on the other hand, to put those works of art out in the gallery in a way that they could be looked at in a more traditional manner so people can really get up close and see the care that he took making these, that they are incredible pieces unto themselves.

PAXTON: I have kind of learned to appreciate that in a way that it is fine art.

But when I think back about some of those pieces like the sphere, when I think about it or I see it in a photograph, it just takes my breath away.

And I think that that's what art should be.

It should take your breath away.

Music CAVIN: People who find that it was meant for healing are even more drawn to it that someone would, without financial motivation, take the time to make the careful, beautiful, symmetrical and surprising pieces that he did, I think that's very moving.

That the-that the motivation was so incredibly pure.

And it translates in the work.

Music DRYDEN: If you're lucky enough to as a creator of art to find your own style and voice, then that's really important.

And it was clear to me from the beginning that Emery was one of those people who had found his- found his voice.

UMBERGER: Whether or not he understood his project in the exact same way that I might understand it, I think in the end we come to the same place.

I'm a firm believer that it works.

I know that when I experience what Emery made that it changes the way I'm thinking and feeling and going throughout the day.

Is that healing power?

Yeah, absolutely.

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