I first met Paul Arnett by accident at a schoolyard playground in 2001. Turned out, my mother-in-law had been a good friend of Paul's father, one of The Last Folk Hero's primary characters, Bill Arnett. My mother-in-law had been a major force in the Atlanta art community and a significant contemporary art collector on a national scale. "Lenore Gold?" Paul Arnett said to me. "She was one of my father's good friends... our family once named a dog after her." I said, "Ummm...OK. Thanks?" Paul was an instantly likeable guy. When he told me that his job was as an Art Historian I was incredibly curious - you don't meet many of those in Atlanta. Paul invited me to visit his family's warehouse of art in an industrial section of Atlanta. The warehouse was cavernous and packed with art by African-American self-taught artists; most notably artwork by an artist named Thornton Dial. I knew only vaguely about Dial. I had seen some of his art and liked it but I knew nothing about him other than that. While at the warehouse, Bill Arnett emerged from the shadows and introduced himself. The nice-to-meet-you chit chat didn't last long as Arnett quickly slipped into a rant about some conspiracy that was afoot to bring down all of black art and to destroy him personally. The enemies included some individuals who I knew well and who seemed harmless enough to me. I looked at Paul to check his reaction. None. I was confused. The alleged enemies included Presidents, Congressmen, Business Leaders, Academics, Curators and Arts Administrators. "They want to destroy all of this," Arnett said, waving his hand across the dark warehouse, "because these artists are so great that they threaten the mainstream, the establishment, the Academy." The Arnetts told me of their deep friendship with Thornton Dial and with other untrained black artists who made work that, in their view, was superior to that of any living artist of any kind, anywhere. The Arnetts immediately brought to mind the folk-pioneers Alan and John Lomax: the father and son team who, through the middle part of the 20th century, traveled the southern backroads discovering blues and folk musicians. Except that for the Arnetts, the treasure they were seeking was visual not musical. "Dial is better than Picasso. Lonnie Holley is better than Matisse. That's why they want these artists gone, demolished," Arnett spouted way too loud for such close range. Then, Bill Arnett pulled me over to a book entitled Souls Grown Deep. Paul and Bill Arnett had written and published this ten-pound monolith with help from Jane Fonda. It turned out that Hanoi Jane had fallen in love with folk art - Vernacular art was the term they used - and she had given the Arnetts over $1 million to fuel their book publishing efforts. Bill Arnett began flipping pages. "Come here," he said, "You need to see this." He pointed to a photo in the book of a sculpture made from rags and wire. The figure was of a woman with wings and a hat. Despite the shabby objects that made up this assemblage, the image was beautiful, haunting. I read the title, "Finally Getting Wings Above the Forty-First Floor." An artist named Lonnie Holley had made it and there was at least half-a-page of text in which he described the work and the muse behind it: my mother-in-law. Six years prior, Holley and another artist visited her gallery-like 40th floor apartment in Atlanta and were so inspired by the art they saw there that they began to create in wholly new ways. Shortly after their visit, my in-laws were driving back from a visit to Hilton Head, SC when their mini-van swerved at 75-miles an hour into the back of an 18-wheeler parked on the highway shoulder. My mother-in-law was killed instantly. Holley had made the sculpture to honor her memory. Who was this guy? What was the conspiracy of which Arnett spoke? How did a father-and-son team - white, well-educated, southern - come to devote their lives to scouring the south for African-American, self-taught artists who couldn't read, nor write and made "art" that sometimes looked like it might at any minute be towed away by the salvation army? What is art, what isn't and who has the right to say? What was Jane Fonda doing in this off-road world? How did such a deep friendship emerge between individuals who were so clearly from different sides of the track? Then there was Bill Arnett and his conspiracy theories. As I asked around town, it turned out that he was famous as an art world agitator…and a genius. Some folks loved him; some hated him; most were flat out confused and exhausted by him. Many of them were named on Arnett's enemies list - which he gave me; a long list with the words "Enemies List" at the top; an asterisk next to the title. The asterisk was explained by Arnett further down the page: "PLEASE KEEP IN MIND, I AM NOT A CROOK," it read. He may be over the top, I thought, but the guy has a sense of humor. It was clear that this was a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story that got more curious the further I probed. It was a story that had to be told. And, I was in a unique position to tell it - a story about larger than life characters written by a guy who is just regular size or maybe a bit smaller."

- Andrew Dietz