Faye Hedera

In 2023 Faye began collecting artwork created by her great-grandmother, Lenis Bevill. Lenis was a prolific but private folk art painter and textile artist who resided in White County, Arkansas. She survived impoverished living conditions during her lifetime in rural Arkansas that she shared with her husband, who was a sharecropper in cotton fields, and her twelve children. Due to a mid-life injury, Lenis was a person with a disability who persevered and created artwork in spite of daily pain and hardship.

Although Lenis passed away long before she was born, Faye felt an immediate connection to her great-grandmother’s colorful, nostalgic depictions of the homes, schools, and churches that shaped her world in the countryside of the Natural State. As word spread within the family that Faye was willing to become caretaker of the delicate works of art created on repurposed materials, as well as the various textile items that had been painstakingly created by Lenis, family members began entrusting Faye with their own heirlooms. Many of the paintings, drawings and fabric pieces had been sitting in storage for decades. Most items had been meticulously documented by Lenis’ children to explain the purpose of saving objects such as cookware, clothing, and even the last purse that Lenis used in the 1970s, which one of her children had saved intact with her personal belongings at the time of her death.

Faye immediately became passionate about making sure that Lenis wasn’t forgotten. Even though she was a full-time artist and mother, she volunteered a significant amount of her time to compile a detailed catalogue to record and track the provenance of each piece, quickly recognizing that her great-grandmother’s story deserved to be shared with a wider audience. The dream of expanding the legacy of Lenis as an Arkansas artist prompted Faye to build a bigger vision for historic preservation of a unique and unheard voice.

After discussing the importance of preserving the work with staff at the University of Central Arkansas, the university determined that the historic value of Lenis Bevill’s renderings of places across central Arkansas warranted careful documentation and stewardship. Her work is now in the process of being archived at UCA, ensuring preservation for future study and appreciation.

In 2025 Faye served as guest curator for an exhibition of Lenis Bevill’s art at the Old State House Museum in Little Rock. She remains honored to have helped bring Lenis’s work into public view for the first time on a broader scale.