My father Bob Heinold had some truly fan­tas­tic say­ings to insert at the proper moment. This morn­ing I remem­ber a sly, side­ways smile as he told me, “Some are born to lead,” in response to my win­ning an hon­or­able men­tion for a sci­ence fair project in the 7^th grade. 1967 or there­abouts. Mom used to say things like “They told me you weren’t fit to eat with the pigs and I said you were.” If she was par­tic­u­larly vexed with my attempt to clean up and appear respectable, she would ask, “Did you get dressed in the closet with the lights out?” or, the famous, “Did you comb your hair with a rake?” These were said with a laugh and a hug, and a com­plete accep­tance of who I was and where I was going (like to a real barn to ride a horse or to the slough to make a frog dam.)

When Momma passed away last April, right on the heels of my sister’s death, it occurred to me that the sto­ries were gone. No one wanted to sit out­side on moon­lit south­ern nights, swat­ting skeeters and swap­ping sto­ries. My nephews don’t know the sto­ries, my daugh­ters are busy mak­ing lifesto­ries of their own, and Rob lis­tens — tol­er­ant to a fault, but his mind is on other things. So Heinold lifesto­ries rest in my head. My brother com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1974, his life became a story before he was 23 years old. Aunts and uncles? All gone. Cousins reside in far away places.

I turn to art when there’s a good tale to tell. Col­lages tell amaz­ing sto­ries. Assem­blages take those para­graphs and cre­ate 3-​D rep­re­sen­ta­tions of con­ver­sa­tions. My favorite pieces are my Story Boxes. “Sis­ter Bego­nia Saves the Orphan Train” is fin­ished, all that’s left is the Artist State­ment, whic in my case means “The Story of Sis­ter Bego­nia” in text not fig­ures. I think the stu­dio calls to me today, it wants me to cre­ate a Bob Story with base­ball as the cen­ter moti­va­tion. Pho­tos of the Sis­ter to be added later, but here you find a cou­ple not-​to-​great pho­tos of Sis­ter Begonia’s story statement.