VIDEO: 'True Faith, True Light'

Book, music honor one man’s unique mission

Donna and Kelly Mulhollan will perform concerts in tribute to Ed Stilley, playing the instruments Stilley gave them, in support of a new book, “True Faith, True Light.” A video of the couple performing is available at youtube.com/nwademgaz.
Donna and Kelly Mulhollan will perform concerts in tribute to Ed Stilley, playing the instruments Stilley gave them, in support of a new book, “True Faith, True Light.” A video of the couple performing is available at youtube.com/nwademgaz.

Time pretty much stopped at Ed Stilley's house in Hogscald Holler when he was a young man.

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette

Ed Stilley spent his life building handmade instruments to give away.

"He is a living time capsule," says musician-turned-author Kelly Mulhollan. "He is frozen in time in 1940s America."

FYI

‘True Faith, True Light’:

Concerts Celebrating the Life of Ed Stilley

Thursday — Fayetteville Public Library, 6 p.m.

Dec. 5 — Shiloh Museum, 2 p.m.

Dec. 13 — Unitarian Universalist Church in Eureka Springs, 3 p.m.

Free.

The book is available at the concerts and from University Press at uapress.com for $37.95.

In Stilley's world, there had always been work, family and the word of God -- definitely not in that order.

"He wears out a Bible every four years," says Donna Mulhollan, Kelly's wife and musical partner. "He's literally got a drawer full of them, just worn out, with his notes written on every page."

Sometime more than 30 years ago, Stilley was plowing a field with his mule when -- as Kelly Mulhollan relates -- he thought he was having a heart attack. Instead, what he had was a vision. In it, he was a giant tortoise with five baby tortoises on his back. God told him, he says, that if he could get his children across a raging river, God would tell Stilley his purpose in life.

He did. And God did. And Stilley started crafting handmade musical instruments from scraps and rusty leftovers -- door springs, saw blades, pot lids, aerosol cans and "who knows what else," as Mulhollan puts it. He never sold them, never signed them. Each he gave away, inscribed with the words "True Faith, True Light" on the top. Most of the more than 200 recipients were children.

To Stilley, the guitars and fiddles were nothing but a way to spread his faith. It was only when the Mulhollans first saw them they realized "we had stumbled on to one of the great American folk artists," Kelly says.

Over the years, the Mulhollans became friends with the "unintentional inventor," and they began to dream of chronicling his life and his "vehicles for devotion" in a book.

"First, we became amateur detectives," Kelly Mulhollan explains. They set out on a quest to document Stilley's instruments and found 50 of them. "He couldn't tell us where they were," Donna says.

They also went through a couple of photographers and a couple of publishers who "didn't work out" before arranging an exhibit of Stilley's instruments at the Walton Arts Center. And that's when everything changed. Robert Cochran, director of the Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies at the University of Arkansas, walked in to the gallery.

Cochran says it was a "really impressive exhibit" that showed viewers exactly how Stilley made his folk art instruments, right down to X-rays of the found objects inside that create the resonance. He also found out that day, when he met Kelly Mulhollan, that he had sketched out a book about Stilley -- and been rejected by the University of Arkansas Press.

"I went down to the press and told them they'd made a mistake and would really regret it if they didn't publish this book," Cochran says. "I thought it would be a benchmark. They agreed to reconsider the book, and Kelly agreed to make some changes."

The result, just released, is "True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley." In its 189 pages -- with scores of photos by Flip Putthoff, Russell Cothran and Kirk Lanier -- Stilley's life, his inspiration and his art are chronicled in a way that is already selling books from coast to coast. Cochran wrote the dozen-page introduction.

"I have never been so invested in my whole career in a book I did not write," he says.

"It's already so much bigger than we ever expected," Donna says of the response.

"We want Arkansas to be proud and to want to hold on to some of the things that make the Ozarks special," Kelly adds.

NAN What's Up on 11/27/2015

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