Ruby C Williams I Sing Because I Am Happy Tampa Art Musuem

Situated in the strawberry fields outside Plant City, Fla., the historical Bealsville community has its share of produce stands. This area is the largest producer of winter strawberries in the world. Paw-painted signs advertising produce, mostly strawberries, line Florida State Road 60 on both sides. The customs, established in 1865 by five families of freed slaves, was 1 of the first African-American-founded communities in the country. Today, a sense of history remains equally many of the current residents tin claim one of the first families as ancestors. Ruby Williams' great-grandmother, Mary Reddick, was one of the original founders of this community, so her connectedness to this land is strong.

Williams left the expanse and lived in New Jersey for more than 25 years. While in that location, she became an evangelistic minister whose mission was to assistance many underprivileged children "notice their way" through spiritual guidance and conveying a "do-what-it-takes-attitude." She recalls with pride that she taught 1 child how to brand extra money by collecting and selling aluminum cans. That boy became a New Jersey Land Trooper on the Garden Country Parkway. Her numerous artistic accomplishments also are a source of pride, just she speaks about near the children she has helped and is helping in a challenging globe. "In that location is so much talent out there. These kids are so talented. Yous simply have to let them sing,"she said, recalling a local schoolhouse musical production she recently attended.

Afterward leaving New Jersey, she moved back to Bealsville to farm the land that had remained in her family unit for more than than a century. She opened a minor produce stand and began selling blackness-eyed peas, squash, collard greens and citrus fruits that she grew on her farm. Noticing that most of the signs lining State Road lx were drab and boring, she decided it might draw more people to her stand up if she used vivid colors and pictures of fruits and vegetables. Her decision was correct.
In 1991, local folk creative person Rodney Hardee, who had passed by her stand for years, decided to stop 1 day to enquire if she had ever made any paintings other than signs. She told him she had done some paintings of fish some time back. He asked her to do a painting of a fish on a tabletop he happened to have in his vehicle. After he saw the painting, he encouraged her to do more paintings, and an creative person was born. She says she feels that the work involved in growing and selling nutrient at the produce stand is just as important as, if not more than important than, painting.

With the back up of Hardee and afterwards Bud Lee, co-founder of the Museum of Serious, NaVve and Children's Art in Plant Urban center, Fla., she has become a prolific creative person, averaging 2 or three paintings a 24-hour interval, while maintaining the farm, harvesting the crops and keeping business hours at the produce stand. She says she has done many paintings; she does not count them.

The walk-in gallery is composed of two big rooms at the back of her stand. The walls and other surfaces are covered with her paintings, done on plywood and equanimous of blocks of bright, unmixed primary colors, straight from the cans. Her compositions range from apartment representations to abstracts. Many of her paintings draw animals (cows, chickens) that lived on her farm, as well as the fruits and vegetables grown at that place now, such as strawberries, oranges and peas. Often she writes her "sayings"– some feisty ones, similar "Stay Out of My Business," "Hey, This is My Life" and "Shut Your Mouth" – on her paintings.

The House of Blues has purchased and displays in their restaurants many of Williams' paintings, especially those with her "sayings." She also paints religious subjects and prints Bible verses on those. "I don't sell the ones with Bible verses on them. It doesn't seem right," she says. She also creates colorful dolls, and she has illustrated a children's volume, I Am Ruby-red, published by Cardel Press, Atlanta, 2004.

In 2005, Williams received the Florida Folk Heritage Award, and, in that same year, her work was featured in the exhibition On Their Ain: Selected Works by Self-Taught African American Artists at the Smithsonian'southward Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture (at present the Anacostia Customs Museum) in Washington, D.C. She has been featured in many other exhibitions and private collections worldwide. Her work is displayed and discussed on the Web site http://www.folkvine.org/blood-red.

Minister, baron, mentor, neighbour and artist, Ruby Williams has accomplished much through hard work while leading a spiritually-guided life and mentoring those around her. She shows no signs of stopping. "One day I would similar to travel. Merely drop everything and go. But I like to make people happy and run across them smile," she says. Whether yous are purchasing squash or a colorful painting or just stopping in for a conversation, you cannot help merely smile when you are in her company.

RANDALL LOTT is a software executive in Tampa, Fla.

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Source: https://folkart.org/mag/ruby-williams

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