Artist Gerri Bauhaus Williams is seen with two of her works inside the North River Civic Center, where she teaches. Her works include "Tennessee Cowhand," which she's holding, and "Valleybrook Golf Course Pond," hanging top right. Both works are traditional watercolor.It's not every day that someone as qualified as Gerri Williams walks into the North River Civic Center and offers to teach art classes, so when it happened, Executive Director Linda Rugina didn't hesitate to act.
"She came by one day and asked me if she could help," Rugina says with a bemused laugh.
"Of course I said yes.
"And she offers the classes at no charge."
Williams offers the classes at no charge more to avoid having to fill out a bunch of paperwork and deal with insurance, she says, "but I enjoy teaching. It is a very satisfying thing for me."
Williams is a world traveler, teacher and artist who spent years serving as a photographer for her journalist husband, Nick Williams Jr. He was a reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times, among other newspapers, covering Asia and the Middle East at various times. He also was the Times deputy foreign-desk editor for several years.
Shortly after he died in Texas from complications from Alzheimer's disease in 2012, Williams moved to Chattanooga to be with her daughter, Nan. Offering to help at North River was hardly out of character for her, nor was it the act of someone who suddenly had time on her hands. It's what she'd done at every turn.
"Everywhere I've lived, I've usually had students, both groups and privately," she says.
She taught at the Torrance Adult School in Torrance, California, for more than 10 years, teaching both watercolor and oil, and sometimes even a design or printmaking class.
Her degree from Scripps College in Claremont, California, was in art, and she went back to school a decade later to get her teaching credentials. She has also headed various art groups at different stops along the way during the couple's travels.
She was president of Pacific Arts in Palos Verdes, California, president of the Gainesville Area Visual Arts in Gainesville, Texas, for several years as well, and while in Bangkok, she initiated a painting group called BAG (Bangkok Arts Group).
Williams will turn 80 in October. She married her husband in 1960 and after stints in Chicago and San Diego, the two lived for the most part in Los Angeles while he was a desk editor. He wanted to see the world from the frontlines, however, and from 1982 to 1992, he was a correspondent reporting on Asia and the Middle East, and Gerri went with him whenever possible.
"I worked with him taking photos for him," she says.
"They (the Times) didn't pay me, but it did pay for my trips."
Williams reported on the first Gulf War in Yemen, and he was there when Iraqi soldiers invaded Kuwait in 1990.
"We had to bribe our way out," Gerri Williams says. "He covered about 35 countries, and I was there for about 25 of them."
Williams uses her maiden name, Bauhaus, for her professional work. She teaches watercolor on the first and third Thursdays of the month and a drawing class on the final Thursday of the month.
Her classes are limited to about 12 people at a time, but she has about twice that many signed up to attend. The classes include some instruction, some storytelling and some group critique sessions.
Deede Gram has been an amateur artist for most of her life. She heard about Williams while shopping in a local art supply shop last summer.
"I wanted to take advantage of having someone like her," Gram says.
"She's a great help. I feel like my drawing skills have improved substantially. So much of it to me is her experience, combined with her having so much education. She brings a freshness to her teaching."
For the drawing classes, Williams puts the assignments in a plastic box and the students choose what they want to do and bring it in for the monthly critique sessions. Students in the watercolor classes tackle all types of subject matter, and Williams says she uses her design background in helping her to critique the works.
"We talk about things like 'What makes this painting good? What holds it together?"
The students can use whatever materials they wish, including their own photographs, as inspiration for their works. Williams even supplies books and magazines from her own collection.
"They've been good about returning them," she says. "I haven't lost any major things."
Rugina says the students are well aware of how fortunate they are to have someone as qualified as Williams. They also appreciate her teaching methods.
"They all circle around her and listen when she is talking. They are really listening and observing and taking it in. She is an artist and she is a teacher."
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.