Celebrating Dataw Artists – Jim Williams

by Marie Doyon and Bill Riski

Jim Williams, one of the original members of VAC, could easily be considered one of our hidden treasures of Dataw. He is a Case Institute of Technology graduate and was a Navy pilot during the late 60’s. His varied interests, engineering background, and wide variety of talents are fascinating, as is his personal art journey. As you read below, remember that Jim says he “hasn’t found his niche yet.”

Where are you from, and what do you make?

I grew up in Rocky River, Ohio, west of Cleveland. My wife, Anne, and I shared the same homeroom from seventh grade through senior year-when we started dating. After dating for about eight years, we finally married. I have a long list of interests:

Fly fishing inspired me to make not only my own flies but also my own bamboo fly rods. It was many years before I finally produced a bamboo rod. It is quite an involved process that required me to fashion many tools needed to construct a bamboo rod.

Woodworking – here again my engineering background helped me to design and build furniture using a variety of woods. I have made several pieces of my designs, including many coffee tables (even one with multiple compartments to display collections of small items), end tables, a mahogany chest of drawers, a corner dining room hutch made of cherry, and many more pieces.

Mahogany Bachelor’s Chest by Jim Williams

Photography – My love of photography started at an early age when my father gave me my first camera, a Yashica twin lens reflex. It was about 1966 when I acquired a Nikon. Most recently, I have moved to Sony equipment. I built my dark room and moved from black and white to color photography. It was called Cibachrome back then.

This should look familiar. It is the cover of the Dataw Historic Foundation’s book, Dataw – No Ordinary Place, published in 2015.

Drawing– Recently, I started to draw – primarily birds. I use colored pencils, but I am branching into other media. It is fun to draw the birds I have been photographing for years.

How long have you seriously been pursuing art?

My photography pursuits have continued for over seventy years. I have been fishing for over fifty years and making bamboo rods for only about ten years. My woodworking “career” spanned about fifty years. And I have been drawing now for one year.

What inspires you to create?

I have always had this need to work with my hands. My mother was a very talented artist. When I was young, I watched her create figurines of beauty from a lump of clay! She also worked with oils, watercolors, and acrylics. In her later years, she taught a group of ladies how to paint. This group continued to meet for many years to exchange ideas and to create. (Much like VAC’s Open Studio.)

Which artists have had the most impact on your creations?

What do they do, and in what way do they influence you?

There have been many. Of course, my mother, whose talents I have always admired, especially her ability to do ceramics.

The work of Ansel Adams has had a significant impact on my photography. He formulated the Zone System, which provides photographers with a systematic method of precisely defining the relationship between how they visualize the photographic subject and the final results by determining optimal film exposure and development.

As for my woodworking- Sam Maloof, one of the most well known furniture designers of the 20th century.

And I credit Everett Garrison for his influence in my bamboo fly fishing rod-making endeavors. Everett was also an engineer.

Is there a work of art that has somehow changed your life or how you view the world?

When I was twenty-four, I saw Michelangelo’s “Pieta” at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and have never forgotten its incredible beauty. A visit to the Acropolis was also unforgettable and awe-inspiring.

But I could not be drawing today if it wasn’t for the support and encouragement from my wife, Anne, an artist in her own right. She recently found her very first sketchbook with a few blank pages and gave it to me. Because I no longer fish or take photos, I now have a new purpose, thanks to her.