HEAVEN SENT: A squirrel named Debbie behind the steering wheel of her boat. Doctors advised Julie Baldyga's parents to institutionalize her, but they didn't take the advice, she grew up to be a luminous human and a brilliant artist.

IN HEAVEN EVERYONE WILL SHAKE YOUR HAND

 BY STEPHANIE BALDYGA-STAGG 

"Hello, I'm Julie. What's your name?"

She's dressed in a pink button-down shirt tucked into loose fitting black pants. A pink knit ear warmer headband holds strands of her chin-length gray bob away from her face. She extends her hand to shake yours, but first examines your fingers and mentions that she likes your arm hair. Her fingers are covered in a thick layer of oil pastel, which she's been using to blend pale yellows into blues to create a tranquil sky surrounding a squirrel named Debbie behind the steering wheel of her boat, its turbine engine prominently showcased as it charges through the water. Julie's rendering and handling of the pastel is masterful. She tells you that this is a squirrel in heaven. "I think she's just so cute," she says with a grin.

Julie's drawing table is in the corner of the airy, open communal workspace shared by the artists of StudioWorks by Zoom Group, a visual art day program whose mission is to educate, empower, and employ adults of all abilities and connect community through creativity. In addition to art supplies, Julie's table is filled with precious objects and gifts from friends and admirers: a tangle of speaker cables (which she refers to as a "squishies"), sparkly bracelets, a pair of fingerless gloves, a magazine article about electronics, an orange plastic spider ring toy, a package of peppermint tea, a small portrait of her late boyfriend Alan, and a broken circuit board.

"You want a puff charge? It gives you energy and makes your hair grow," she explains. You say yes and Julie puts her thumb and index finger together against your temple and makes a soft, high-pitched sound, "Tooooo weeeeeeee… toooo weeeee! There you go!" You've never been greeted in such a loving and generous manner.

Puff charges are just one small part of Julie's fascinating and complex cosmology, which involves electrical currents, nuclear power plants, engines, hair, handshakes, and perhaps most important of all, heaven. All of these elements find their way into the oil pastels, ceramics and soft sculptures Julie creates at StudioWorks. 

Her creativity does not end there. When she returns to her basement studio each evening, she creates heavenly people—over 400 life sized human forms made from cheesecloth, plastic bags, batting and other materials. The heavenly people are accessorized with clothing and props. Each represents a person Julie has known throughout her life, who she believes will be made real and perfect one day in heaven, when she reunites with them. In Julie's heaven, everyone works on automobiles, power plants, lawnmowers or ships. All are happy. Julie is the youngest of five children born to my parents, Walter and Edna Mae Baldyga. I remember my mother talking to me on the phone the day Julie was born. She said Julie was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. I could hardly wait to see my perfect baby sister. None of us knew at the time what difficulties lay ahead. In 1997 my mother recorded some of her early memories about Julie: At a very early age Julie cried constantly. She did not like to be held or coddled. Later she was diagnosed as autistic and "emotionally disturbed." Around the age of three, her doctor told me that her EKG showed some brain damage had occurred, possibly at birth. We put her in a hospital to try to determine more about her condition. She didn't respond to anyone. We were told she might be deaf. She rocked and made strange noises almost constantly. I began taking her to the child guidance clinic every day. She went there for two or three years. Then I was told she had not improved and probably would not. She hadn't talked. The psychiatrist there told me there was nothing more they could do. She said I should put her into a mental hospital. I took her there and the psychiatrist told me she should stay there as she would always be a danger to others. They had so little to offer and I couldn't accept this. For the next several years, Julie was with us at home, still rocking from side to side and making strange noises.

I took Julie to Children's Hospital where she was examined by another psychiatrist. He told me to send her to a children's home as there was no hope for her and she would be a detriment to us and our other children. I could not do this and kept trying to teach her and do the best that I could to make her feel loved. At around the age of seven, Julie was accepted into the Alfred Binet School for the perceptually handicapped.

A UNIQUE VISION: Puff charges are just one small part of Julie's fascinating and complex cosmology, which involves electrical currents, nuclear power plants, engines, hair, handshakes, and perhaps most important of all, heaven. All of these elements find their way into the oil pastels, ceramics and soft sculptures Julie creates at StudioWorks.

I witnessed many of the unusual behaviors that Mom alluded to during Julie's early years. On one occasion, I was alone with Julie while Mom and Dad were out for the evening and Julie became very upset because she wanted more hoses to play with. When my parents returned, they went to a gas station to find a hose and when they gave it to her, she was happy again. No one understood why Julie wanted hoses. She just did. She also wanted knee socks. One day I came home from high school and Julie had knotted together knee socks and thrown them out a second floor window of our home. Her "rope" reached all the way to the ground, like Rapunzel's hair. On one shopping trip, Julie saw a man in Bermuda shorts wearing knee socks. She broke away and ran over to hug his knees and touch his socks, crying for them.

PASTEL WORLDS: In Heaven Everyone Will Shake Your Hand is a book and exhibition that takes an in-depth look at a distinctive self-taught artist and her work. The collection serves as a poignant reminder of what is possible when we refuse to write people off.

Along with my parents' perseverance in giving her a loving and supportive upbringing at home, Julie's time at the Binet School was also a tremendously positive experience. Julie began to speak for the first time. The Binet School remains vivid for Julie. Much of the artwork she creates today is based on the friends she met there.

Mom was always a creative person. She did some oil painting copies of old master works. She refinished furniture, sewed clothes, gardened and redecorated the home. Dad was also very influential in stimulating Julie's imagination and giving her ideas. He was a voracious reader and could talk about everything from insects, birds or electronics to the composition of dirt, minerals, or beer. Julie was fascinated by wires, tubes, and machines. Dad was encyclopedic and could answer questions about all of the technical things that Julie was interested in, like how light bulbs worked and what each color of wire does on the back of a television set. Dad gave Julie those thin, pliable, multi-colored wires and she would drape them, knot them and suspend them from living room furniture like a huge spider web. Sometimes you could not walk through the living room because there were so many wires stretched across the furniture. Mom and Dad always encouraged Julie in her creative pursuits. They supplied her with educational toys like model airplanes and a valves are drawn with obsessive detail, often resembling the illustrations in auto parts manuals. Julie's self-taught use of the oil pastel medium is an amazing accomplishment. The drawings show both control and a deep understanding of color and blending of pigment, which she does with her fingers.

A friend of Mom's told her about Louisville Diversified Services (LDS), which had several day programs for adults with special needs, including an arts program. This was the first time that Julie began to sell her art and she developed a loyal following in the community. 

In 1988, Julie received a grant from the  Kentucky Foundation for Women to restock her supplies and to preserve and frame some of her early pastel drawings. These works, along with some of her heavenly people and sculpted machine parts were exhibited in a show that my husband Bob curated while serving as gallery director at Spalding University. More shows followed. LDS eventually changed its name to StudioWorks by Zoom Group. Twenty years later, StudioWorks is at the center of Julie's life. It provides a broad social network of friends and staff. Her self-confidence has grown. When Julie and I go out together, she often greets people she meets saying, "Hi, my name is Julie and I'm an artist."

On April 17, the Louisville Story Program will publish In Heaven Everyone Will Shake Your Hand, a book of artwork that Julie has created over the past 45 years. It's the story of visual art creation at its purest and most compelling. It's also a story about love and what is possible when a person is given the support and encouragement to be their full, authentic self.• 

Title: In Heaven Everyone Will Shake Your Hand: The Art of Julie Baldyga  Publisher: Louisville Story Program Publication Date: April 17, 2020 Order at louisvillestoryprogram.org/store

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephanie Baldyga-Stagg, an artist, is the older sister of Julie Baldyga.•