The couple left in 1999 and spent three years in Jamaica, first in the slums of a city, where Wilson helped residents organize neighborhood improvements, then in a small fishing village, where Wilson organized women's groups and taught reproductive health and literacy. She helped the women establish a business creating and painting clay votive candle holders that they sold to a budding tourist population. "It was a great experience being in Jamaica. You're on your own and you have to make something of nothing," she said. "You find out about yourself and your strengths." When they returned in 2002, Wilson realized their Christina home was drowning in excess, with an inground pool and countless items she didn't remember she owned. They decided to move to a smaller place, a bungalow near Lake Morton in Lakeland. "I had no project. I had a lot of energy and I wanted to do something," she said. She tried a number of activities. She took cooking lessons from Gary Schmidt, then the co-owner of the Antiquarian in Lakeland, who hired her to bake desserts. On the side, Wilson imported and sold Chinese folk art paintings with the help of one of her sons, who lives in Beijing. She and her husband also continued to travel, visiting Jamaica, China, Italy and South Africa, among other countries. The idea for Platform came after a trip to San Francisco. Unemployed after the post-dot-com boom, Wilson's youngest son had started hosting art parties in old city warehouses.
Jamaica RPCV Ann Wilson founded Platform Art
Art Group Helps Ann Wilson Find Place in Community
By Shoshana Walter
Published: Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 8:42 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, June 28, 2009 at 8:42 p.m.
Caption: Platform Art founder Ann Wilson, seen with an untitled tapestry created by her mother, organized women's groups and taught while in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. Photo: Paul Johnson | The Ledger
The most coveted piece in Ann Wilson's art collection is an old framed cross stitch beside the front door of her house.
Her grandmother made it in childhood. The letters are crude, the white cloth faded. Her children have clamored for it for years. The message: "Come off to the Home of thy Friend, lest weeds grow in thy path."
Wilson, 65, has no hesitation about the piece's meaning:
"It says you want people around you."
Six years ago, Wilson started a local organization called Platform Art mostly for that reason.
After returning from the Peace Corps in 2002, she decided she wanted to find her place in the community.
Many local artists now say Platform has done the same for them.
The nonprofit organization hosts biannual art parties featuring artists of all levels and media.
The key is accessibility and integration, Wilson says. Anyone can attend and participants include artists in the visual arts, fashion, film, music and performance.
The events draw hundreds despite being held in some of Polk County's most unlikely art venues, including Tiger Town and Lakeland Linder Regional Airport.
And they've given Wilson, a retired human resources professional, a local role.
"It's definitely given me a place in the community," she said.
Wilson doesn't have a background in art. She grew up in a brick farmhouse in a rural town outside of Reading, Pa. Her father, born into a family of Jamaican missionaries, ran an aviation organization. Her mother taught English at a local middle school.
A Vassar College graduate, Wilson's mother gave Wilson and her three siblings a thirst for learning about other people and cultures.
"We were always surrounded by books and art," Wilson recalled. "It brings out the beauty and creativity in the world. It gets in your pores."
Some of the same artworks from her childhood cover the surfaces of her Lakeland home, including one of her mother's unpublished manuscripts, a novel about the Incas, into which her mother poured hours of research.
"She read with voraciously and wrote many novels, although none were ever published," Wilson said of her mother. "The criticism was usually that it was too intellectual and it would never sell."
After a few semesters at Penn State University studying sociology, Wilson left school to marry an engineer and had three sons.
The family lived in Los Angeles and around Southern California, in Texas and finally in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.
After a divorce, she met Pete Wilson, a retired military engineer, at a wedding in North Carolina. They married in 1996 and lived briefly in Taiwan before settling in Lakeland.
With both retired, Wilson set her sights on the Peace Corps.
"He said, 'No, I'm not doing that.' So I immediately sent off the application, of course," she recalled, with a laugh.
The couple left in 1999 and spent three years in Jamaica, first in the slums of a city, where Wilson helped residents organize neighborhood improvements, then in a small fishing village, where Wilson organized women's groups and taught reproductive health and literacy.
She helped the women establish a business creating and painting clay votive candle holders that they sold to a budding tourist population.
"It was a great experience being in Jamaica. You're on your own and you have to make something of nothing," she said. "You find out about yourself and your strengths."
When they returned in 2002, Wilson realized their Christina home was drowning in excess, with an inground pool and countless items she didn't remember she owned.
They decided to move to a smaller place, a bungalow near Lake Morton in Lakeland.
"I had no project. I had a lot of energy and I wanted to do something," she said.
She tried a number of activities. She took cooking lessons from Gary Schmidt, then the co-owner of the Antiquarian in Lakeland, who hired her to bake desserts.
On the side, Wilson imported and sold Chinese folk art paintings with the help of one of her sons, who lives in Beijing.
She and her husband also continued to travel, visiting Jamaica, China, Italy and South Africa, among other countries.
The idea for Platform came after a trip to San Francisco.
Unemployed after the post-dot-com boom, Wilson's youngest son had started hosting art parties in old city warehouses.
Wilson returned to Lakeland and asked artist Erika Schmidt, the Antiquarian's other co-owner, if she wanted to help start a series of art parties in Polk.
"She has a way of getting people really excited," Schmidt said of Wilson.
While Schmidt reached out to her artist friends, Wilson asked local businesses for sponsorship.
One of the volunteers who lent Platform a professional polish was Tom Monaco.
A furniture designer and sculptor in Lakeland, Monaco built wooden bars for the eighth Platform party and continues to make contributions whenever he can.
Wilson says he is among hundreds of volunteers who keep the organization alive.
"It's really a reflection of her," Monaco said. "When you meet Ann, you're like, 'All right, Ann, I'll do whatever you want.'"
Monaco moved to Lakeland in 2006.
Like Wilson, he said Platform gave him a community. About 200 people attended the first party.
The number now exceeds 500, Wilson said.
"It helps strengthen the base for all the arts," Monaco said. "It's all about making art accessible. They're not pretentious about it. They're not up on a pedestal. You come in and enjoy it. It's a big party and the artists are there."
In addition to the art displays and performances, the $10 entrance fee comes with two glasses of wine and catered snacks. The next event, themed "Art and Architecture," is scheduled for Sept. 26.
The topic is one with which Wilson is familiar. She is former president and continues to serve on the Board of Directors of Historic Lakeland Inc., a group dedicated to preserving local, historic architecture.
At home, Wilson also works to preserve the past.
She hopes to revise her late mother's novel by replacing some of the Incan words with English. Her home is covered in works of art, some from her childhood, other pieces from Jamaica, Taiwan or China, and still more from the Platform parties, through which she's met hundreds of artists.
But she insists she's not a collector. The meaning behind each piece comes from her life experience.
"It's a memory," she says, of each work.
