Rena Heagle: Inspired to create

Art is all I’ve ever wanted to do. It just fulfills my soul and reveals what’s really in me. – Rena Heagle

By TIM WILCOX
Special to the Alpine Mountaineer

There’s something really special about a certain backyard in Crestline. At its center is a worktable with saws and a plane. To the right is a shed with numerous additional tools and raw materials. Providing a colorful background, neighboring homes are red, blue, purple, golden yellow and mint green. This setting is where some of the mountains’ most unusual and striking artwork is created.

The artist is Rena Heagle, whose winsome smile and lilting laughter make strong first impressions. She’s originally from Texas (Odessa) but has lived most of her years in Southern California. According to Rena (pronounced Renay): “In 1965 my dad moved our family out here because this is where the opportunities were. We settled in Long Beach, and I grew up there until I was 16. Then in 1971 we moved again, to Fountain Valley, where I finished high school.”

Returning mentally to Long Beach for a moment when she was just 8 years old, Rena conjures a vivid memory of her father making the front page of the city’s Press-Telegram. “My dad was a mechanic, but he also was an entrepreneur, always inventing things,” Rena says. “One day we stopped at a hardware store, where we picked up some plastic sheets, bamboo poles, masking tape and rope. Down by the beach, he proceeded to build a 23-foot-wide French war kite that actually flew. That was front-page news!”

It was also one of many exciting episodes for Rena and her two siblings (a brother and sister) for whom their father was an endless source of fun. “He built hang gliders before anyone knew what they were,” she recalls, “in the process hurting several of his friends – but not too badly. And we used to fly around in gyrocopters out at the Salton Sea.” Then, lightheartedly: “ I still wonder how my dear mother was so patient and trusting!”

He also taught Rena a lot about fixing cars, which enabled her to develop refined manual skills at an early age. That hands-on aptitude would prove to be a key to her success as an artist.

A need to create

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt the need to create,” Rena says. “So I decided while I was in high school that the only job I’d look for was something in art.” At age 17, before graduating, she began assisting Bill Toma, a metal sculptor whose reputation would grow significantly in subsequent years. Casting herself as “Bill’s grunt worker” and working mostly with brass and copper, Rena created many of the small elements, such a leaves, for the artist’s large sculptures. “It wasn’t really what I wanted to do,” she reveals, “but it was a start.”

She kept looking and, still 17 years old, discovered Ceramic Oddities, a Garden Grove company that produced a popular line of giftware. Some of the items were even featured on “The Johnny Carson Show” and in the movie Cujo. Rena came on board and introduced a number of new products, including items for the company’s line of baby giftware.

She forged a personal connection as well with the Heagles, who owned Ceramic Oddities. “I married Ken, their bratty son,” Rena says with that winsome smile.

The Heagle family sold their business in 1986. Rena and Ken, who had two young children then, heard the mountains call and moved up to Running Springs in 1987. They continued doing ceramic-based work, filling orders for various down-the-hill venues, and also opened a shop in town. Staffing proved to be a challenge there, so the couple bought a home-service business based in Lake Arrowhead, which in Rena’s words “was very popular in the day.” They purchased a house on North Bay and settled in with their kids, Nicholas and Cheree.

Sensing the need for a new chapter, Rena moved down the hill in 1997 and lived in a number of places, including Laguna Niguel, Anaheim Hills and Upland. “For many years I was a marketing director for construction and environmental contractors,” she says.

Looking for a property investment, in 2010 she bought a home in Crestline. “My daughter, who’d had the first two of my five grandchildren, moved into the house and lived there for 10 years,” says Rena, who continued her work as a marketing director. Then COVID-19 intervened and strongly suggested the need for yet another new chapter. So in 2020 Rena moved back up to the mountains and into her Crestline cabin, which was karmic timing because daughter Cheree and children were moving out of the residence. 

A focus on art at last

It was a welcome and fruitful homecoming. What had been primarily an avocation became a vocation. Focusing on her first love, Rena became a member of the Mountain Arts Network and soon was admitted to the group’s gallery in Lake Arrowhead Village.

Although she’d painted with oils and acrylics, Rena chose to emphasize three-dimensional works incorporating many different ingredients. One piece, for instance, features silver-plated napkin rings, pine cones, ivory and stained glass plus hand-cut and -sanded cedar. Another includes copper BBs, a man’s necklace chain and leather. She even carves antlers from palm-tree trimmings. Heart shapes and arrowheads are her primary icons, and wood – oak, walnut, maple, cedar, mahogany, Douglas fir, pine, manzanita and more – is a dominant ingredient these days. The spectrum of grains and finishes is captivating.

Her sources of inspiration are myriad and sometimes mysterious. “I don’t know where some of my ideas come from,” says Rena. “I can be driving and something comes to me, or I’ll be walking in the forest where I find a piece of wood and envision what it could become.”

Many of the artworks incorporate numerous pieces of wood, carefully cut and finished, then assembled like an intentional, but also spontaneous, puzzle. The pieces are mostly abstract rather than representational. She completes some in a few days or weeks. Others evolve over the course of years.

It’s no surprise that Rena is the mountain mistress of tools: “I have a scroll saw, a band saw, a jigsaw, a table saw, a chop saw, a circular saw and a chainsaw.” She also uses a drill press, orbital and belt sanders, a planer, an angle grinder, carving tools and Dremel rotary tools. Artwork elements are affixed to a sturdy wood base with a brad nailer and Titebond wood glue.

“Art is all I’ve ever wanted to do,” Rena shares, summing up the emphasis of the last few years. “It just fulfills my soul and reveals what’s really in me.”

In her backyard domain, the artist works for hours with classic rock playing in the background. A snippet of conversation ensues with her visitor about music and musicians. Rena shares that she plays piano, guitar and drums. For this gifted individual, expressions of the inspiration to create are audible as well as visual.

View Rena Heagle’s latest creations at the Mountain Arts Network gallery in Lake Arrowhead Village. Her email address is renaay@aol.com.