Ruby C. Williams, friend and acclaimed artist, dies at 92
Ruby Williams talks about her work at an island art sale.
Ruby C. Williams, 92, a self-taught acclaimed artist, minister and farmer from Bealsville, died Aug. 8.
She was tops in the outsider art world and well known to artists and art collectors. She visited Anna Maria Island and The Islander several times, beginning in 2003 with a sidewalk show at the newspaper office, where she sold more than $4,000 worth of paintings and shared her proceeds with Anna Maria Elementary.
Her island shows were cosponsored by artist and friend Ines Norman and Mike Norman Realty.
She came to be one of the Tampa Bay area’s best-known artists of the past three decades, and one of Florida’s leading folk artists.
In 2005, she received the Florida Folk Heritage Award and her work was featured in the exhibition “On Their Own: Selected Works by Self-Taught African American Artists” at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum in Washington, D.C.
Ruby authored a children’s book
In 2009, the Folk Art Society of America gave her its Award of Distinction.
Williams’ great-grandmother was one of five freed slaves to found Bealsville and Williams was born and raised on the farm there, the third of seven children.
From her roadside stand on State Road 60 in Bealsville, 40 minutes east of Tampa, she started painting signs to help sell her farm-grown fruits and vegetables.
“I just had this notion all my life to paint,” Williams told us. “I always thought I could do something with my hands. I thought folks —my family — would laugh at me when I paint.”
From simple signs on sheets of plywood to advertise strawberries and watermelon, eventually, Williams’ characters emerged, and the art spilled over from the produce stand to a tin-roofed gallery to displays along the fences bordering the dirt driveway and along the animal pens and fields.
Paintings with alligators, dogs, birds, fish and folks provided Williams’ messages in recurring themes.
A produce sale accompanied Ruby Williams’ art shows.
The characters in her paintings were hers alone. “Those are mine. They mine. They only belong to me.” And the ideas, she said, come from “the spirit of the Lord. He reveals to me what to do or when to do it.”
And as folk art grew in popularity and the art world came to acknowledge outsider art —work by untrained artists — Williams got noticed.
“I said it all man,” and “Get off my back, you rode long enough” were popular phrases, while “Strawberry Girl” and other characters had their say.
The island art shows also included Williams’ natural-grown farm produce.
Small strawberry signs — “So sweet” — were top sellers.
It all worked to her advantage.
Ruby C. Williams painted on found objects, including lunchboxes, and created stuffed, painted pillows of her favorite characters.
She lived in a travel trailer behind the produce stand.
I stopped there once in the early 2000s and left with honey, collards and other produce, all while wishing I’d asked if the signs were for sale. By the time I returned, she’d been “discovered.”
But more priceless than the signs, at least for me, was her friendship.
A service in remembrance of Ruby C. Williams will be at 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, at St. Mary’s Missionary Baptist Church, 1840 E. State Road 60, Plant City — not far from the produce stand.
— Bonner Joy
Elaine Chase Jackson
Elaine Chase Jackson. 79, died Aug. 5 after years of fighting cancer.
She was born in Rhode Island and raised in Jackson, New Hampshire.
She was a 1965 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, and briefly enjoyed being a hippie in San Francisco. She was a loyal employee of the Jack Frost Shop.
At age 33, despite joking of forever being an old maid, Elaine found her great love, Joe. They married in 1977.
The moved to Anna Maria Island where she and Joe bought a house on Key Royale Drive in 2001.
She truly loved her AMI family of friends … neighbors and friends, those she met for beach walks and shared dinners and Sunday card games, book club and sailing club friends. She was thankful for friends during Joe's illness and death in 2011.
No service is planned.
Mrs. Jackson is survived by Joe's three children, their nine children and12 great-grandchildren.