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SEAN CLANCY Arkansas Democrat-Gazette I t was around the middle of December 2015 when folklorist and author Robert Cochran of the University of Arkansas was having lunch at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock with Bill Gatewood, Gail Stevens and Jo Ellen Maack of the Old State House Museum. Cochran, of the university's Center for Arkansas and Regional Studies, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and a frequent guest curator at the museum, was pitching an idea for a new exhibit. When that idea didn't work out, he mentioned something else that might be better suited for the Old State House. "Bob said, 'I just want to put a bug in your ear, and I thought you might be interested,'" says Maack, the museum's curator. He told the three about Ed Stilley, the preacher, sawmill worker and subsistence farmer from rugged, isolated Hogscald Hollow in Madison County who built guitars and other stringed instruments out of found parts and scrap wood and gave them away to children. Stilley, who had five children with his wife, Eliza, started making instruments in 1979, believing God had instructed him to do so, and finished more than 200 of the often ungainly, fascinating pieces before arthritis in his hands forced him to quit. After the lunch "we sat in my office, the three of us, and said, 'We've got to do this,'" Maack recalls of the reaction she shared with museum director Gatewood and exhibit director Stevens. The result is "True Faith, True Light, the Devotional Art of Ed Stilley," open at the museum through March 2018. Nearly 30 of Stilley's instruments — guitars, mandolins and banjos — are hanging in Little Rock along with a display of his tools, the crude wooden jig he used to bend instruments into their sometimes cockeyed shapes and a video featuring an interview with Stilley. There's even a Stilley guitar that visitors can play. Arranged in chronological order and representing Stilley's early, middle and late periods, the instruments begin with a six-string banjo, the first piece he completed. Made of pine with a cooking pot nestled in the middle of its body that acts as a resonator, it looks like some sort of odd shop project. Mirrors show the backs of some of the pieces and each instrument displayed is accompanied by an X-ray, taken by the Mocek Spine Clinic in Little Rock. Stilley, who is wheelchair-bound now and lives just off a highway a few miles from the hollow where he spent most of his life, found that placing items inside the bodies of his guitars helped with the sound, so the X-rays reveal carefully placed springs, saw blades, glass medicine bottles and even the odd aerosol can — Right Guard, in one case. For the saddle, where the strings sit on the bridge, he often fashioned bone from the family's supper scraps. The guitar frets are usually made of brazing FEBRUARY 11-17, 2018 WHAT'S UP! 37 ARTS AWAY! FAQ 'True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley' WHEN — Through March WHERE — Old State House Museum, 300 West Markham St., Little Rock COST — Free INFO — 501-324-9685; oldstatehouse.com Faith becomes art becomes music becomes more See Stilley Page 38 Courtesy Photo Ed Stilley, who spent his life building handmade instruments for children near Hogscald Holler in Madison County, poses with one of his guitars late in his body of work. Stilley is the subject of Kelly Mulhollan's book, "True Faith, True Light: The Devotional Art of Ed Stilley," and an exhibit at the Old State House Museum.