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If it’s held true that ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ then perhaps in kind, strife is the sire of expression. For his part, visual artist William “Bill” C. Farmer wasn’t satisfied with the broad strokes of aphorism—strife, he would come to reveal over his 40-year career, was the domain of many mediums; his motivation, multimodal.
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Prolific and politically minded, Farmer was born and eventually anchored in Omaha from where he’d launch extended retreats to Europe, East Asia, and most faithfully, Latin America. Over the course of these travels he developed a keen, if at times quixotic, eye for global injustice.
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For example, after studying post-revolutionary murals of “Los Tres Grandes”—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—across Mexico in 1993, Farmer returned stateside the following year to complete his ambitious “Horrors of War,” a six-piece commission for Pleasant Dale’s (now defunct) Prairie Peace Park. And while rifles, regimes, and resistance loom large in his works, minute, even tedious cessions to pain draw largesse from his brushstrokes; like his “Portraits of Marge” series, a catalog of his wife’s bedfast battle with hepatitis, waged and colorfully recorded in Mexico City circa 1966.
Historically, Farmer’s pieces aren’t the committee-sanctioned ones framed by halogen lights and gilded placards. Rather, his work springs up organically—casting wide, weltering roots that seem to find people as opposed to being found, especially in the dark.
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Such was the case for famed anti-war activist Daniel Berrigan, the first priest to claim a registry on the FBI’s most-wanted list, who wrote from his dank Danbury Prison cell, in part:
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“The art of William Farmer spans the worlds of social and psychic violence with vision akin to Blake’s or Bosch’s…a voice in the desert, speaking words of salvation…a portrayal of death, a myth of the present world and its ways, a wrestling with real demons and false men … The world will know in its evil wisdom, how to deal with such a man; but his friends know another method—that of contemplation, wonder, and gratitude.”
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Scrawled in thick, blackletter calligraphy, Berrigan’s epigraph accompanies hundreds of paintings, drawings, and sculptures, each Farmer originals, stored at the Brownville Education Center for the Arts and Humanities (BECAH) in Brownville, Nebraska. The works traveled there with Antiquarium bookstore proprietor Tom Rudloff when he exchanged the brick and mortar of the Old Market for that of a vacant Brownville schoolhouse in 2006.
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While both iterations of the bookstore garnered world renown for their rare and eclectic volumes, the treasures on display were arguably outshined by the silver tongue and golden heart of Rudloff himself. Known to open the Antiquarium doors—and his pocketbook—to a menagerie of fresh-faced drifters and hard-luck raconteurs, his talent for quips (in no less than eight languages) belied an extreme generosity.
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“I’ve contacted several of his friends because I wanted to know more about Tom, and one of them told me something that really struck my heart, and that was that Tom took a vow of poverty at the age of 16, and that tells you a lot about the man,” said BECAH President Dale Dickutt.
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As recounted in a dedication by customer-turned-confidant Erich Christiansen and published in The Reader following Rudloff’s passing in 2016, “Tom intervened and offered to create a space where Farmer’s work could be saved—and viewed by the public,” when the latter, beset by a fit of mania, threatened to destroy his life’s work. The result was the grand opening of the Bill Farmer Gallery in 1979, which, according to Christiansen’s account, saved whom Rudloff considered “one of the greatest artists of the 20th century” from an act of creative self-immolation.
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Preserving this shared legacy has been no small task. When BECAH purchased the building in 2021, the intervening years following Rudloff’s death found the building besieged on multiple fronts—by vandals, the elements, and worst of all, plumbing issues. Thankfully, most if not all of Farmer’s work endured, and BECAH, with Dickutt personally investing a great deal of sweat into the project, has been revived and repurposed.
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“You go through that tunnel so long and you don’t see any light, and all of sudden it’s like, ‘Hey, it’s starting to look good now.’ Hopefully something Tom would be proud of,” Dickutt recalled of the multi-year restoration efforts. “An art education center is what we’re doing here, and we’re going to have art classes, humanities classes, readings. We want to have traveling historical exhibits come in (too).”
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Though the space has taken shape, the cataloguing of Bill Farmer’s works ensures Dickutt and the board members of BECAH have many more hours of work ahead. To ease the load and engage a critical eye, Dickutt enlisted Omaha native Teresa Gleason to help sort and appraise the art. Co-owner of the Benson neighborhood’s Ming Toy Gallery, Gleason lends both experience and exposure to the endeavor.
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“BECAH is a very small organization, and Dale can only be in so many places at once,” noted Gleason. “I’m going to try and help coordinate the inventory and cataloguing process. And then, eventually, a sale of (Farmer’s) work at my gallery in Omaha. Obviously, the work would be sold through here (BECAH).”
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She continued, “The other thing I’m trying to do is document the process. If you lived in Omaha during the ’70s, you probably knew who Bill Farmer was. But we don’t want his story and contributions to be lost—an important part of the project is to document the process and to try and gather as many resources and archival material as possible.”
To this end, Gleason has dedicated a page on the Ming Toy website for chronicling the project and highlighting discovered pieces. For those unfamiliar with Farmer’s life and career, it’ll serve as a continuously growing resource. For those like Omaha native Ann McGill, Farmer’s history lies closer to home.
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“So my father, Ed McGill—he was a realtor—rented this house on 42nd and Bert to Margie and Bill Farmer,” Ann said. “(Bill) painted on the interior walls of the entire home…on one wall, he painted Mary and the ‘Women of the Well.’ In the front room, it was the ‘Good Shepherd.’”
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Back in 1959, Ed didn’t mind the Farmers redecorating after moving in. In fact, he collected and reframed pieces his tenants left behind; though, not everyone who visited the home shared this delight in their eccentricities.
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“(Bill) was also a carver. In the basement of the house, he was carving a ‘Christos,’ a Christ,” Ann recounted. “He actually had the arms separated from the torso and legs…and my dad sent a plumber down…and he came up screaming!”
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These personal anecdotes and artistic artifacts inspired Ann to record and assemble interviews with those who encountered the Farmers, including her father who described him as “contemplative” and drawn to nature.
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“My dad said that (Farmer) always tried to look at ‘the spirit of things,’ and ‘paint the spirit,’” Ann continued. “He wasn’t always given the recognition he deserved (…) he’s always been on the edge.”
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In life, Farmer not only exhibited a varied and robust creative output, but invested in the next generation of Omaha artists—holding teaching positions at Creighton University, the College of St. Mary, Metropolitan Community College, and Omaha University (now the University of Nebraska at Omaha). Because of people like Dickutt, Gleason, and McGill—and countless others who Farmer’s work has touched—that legacy continues, with all proceeds from the sale of his art going toward BECAH and its programming.
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“We’ve got a room that we’d like to dedicate to Tom (Rudloff) and to Bill Farmer,” Dickutt said. “Because their lives are a story within themselves.”
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For more information, visit brownville-ne.com/creativedistrict and mingtoygallery.com.
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This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Omaha Magazine.
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