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It was a pleasant afternoon when I visited with Jane Buis, her husband Ralph, Donnie Simonton and long-time friends William and Naomi Mason.

As we passed around humorous stories, I learned quickly that Jane can hand back anything that’s thrown at her.

Another thing I learned was that she was born with a natural gift for creating art from what would first appear as a common object. Her home is decorated with many of her favorite creations.

Born in the Rocktown section of Jefferson County, Marcella “Jane” Buis was one of 4 sons and two daughters of James and Ethel Pate Carter.

While sharecropping in hay, tobacco, wheat and other farm crops, father James had also helped build the Interstate highways, while mother Ethel worked at Carson-Newman (then) College as a custodian and in the school’s library. Jane, who remembers her early years as being “the biggest tomboy you ever seen in your life,” told that her father would leave instructions on what jobs his children were to do that day.

“On a farm, you always did something to do” she continued. “My daddy had always told me that he was going to teach me how to take care of myself after he was gone.”

Still lively to this day, Jane recalled getting a spanking on her first day in Mrs. Ingram’s class at Jefferson City’s Nelson-Merry School.

With the coming of integration, Jane would be in the 7th grade in Nelson-Merry’s last year and would go on to attend Jefferson City Middle School and on to Jefferson City High School. Her memories of the newly integrated schools were: “They picked on us and told us that it wasn’t our school. They had a black squad and a white squad on the basketball team, and when the white squad would get behind, they’d put us in.”

After leaving school, Jane would stay in Kentucky for a time before their strange to her meals of spaghetti cooked with beans would aid in her decision to return home at 19.

After earning her G.E.D. diploma she would work at a Jefferson City nursing home for 3 years before taking a job with the line crew going into the Phipps Bend project. With the closing of the Phipps Bend project and not wanting to follow her company to a job at Hollywood, Mississippi, Jane would take a year off from public work.

Approved for a CETA grant, she moved to Morristown and headed to Walters State Community College where she studied horticulture and graduated with an Associate of Science degree in 1984.

Finding that jobs in her area of study were then low paying, she headed to work at the Anchor Brush Company, where in the parking lot her eyes fell on Ralph Buis.

To get his attention, she tossed a handful of parking lot gravel toward him. That effort would lead to their dating and their marriage in 1990 on Jane’s birthday. Jane and Ralph remain an incredibly close couple, with Jane choosing to receive tools to work on her crafts for her birthday/anniversary gifts.

Ralph is the son of the noted storyteller Helen Buis. With the Buis family packed with talented people, Ralph’s advice to his new wife was that his mother wouldn’t agree to Jane not taking up a skill. Jane and her mother-in-law would become fast friends and would spend many days on long shopping trips and local journeys.

She and Ralph share children Ralph Jr. (deceased)., Norman Cox (deceased), Claudette Brown and Marc Cox, along with a goodly number of grandchildren and great grandchildren.

A turning point in Jane’s life came when she and Ralph stopped at a yard sale where Jane bought 3 gourds. Jane saw art in the gourds and began carving and painting them, which led to her growing them. Friend Sammie Nicely had mentioned seeing a large number of gourds for sale near Cookeville’s “Grand Canyon of the South.”

With that news, she and Ralph headed to see the gourds.

Their visit would find Ralph’s truck loaded with assorted gourds as fully as they could pack them in. Upon returning home and storing their bounty, Ralph would find that the gourds had nearly blocked his bathroom. Jane would soon go to work on their bounty.

“The Kuumba celebration showed my work and made me the featured artist”, she continued.

“I met a man, Bruce Bennett, at the celebration who told me about the ‘One Ton’ challenge where I got to carve a ton block of marble. I carved the ‘African Queen’ which on the U.was featured on the U.T.. campus. Following that I had a heart attack and did nothing for 4 years. The Lord kept telling me that I had a good family that was supporting me and that it was time to get up, so I started back to work on my gourds. I can use any kind of a gourd and use a Dremel tool and acrylic paint with a brush or a sponge to create my projects.”.

Jane draws her inspiration from what she sees around her. One particular opportunity came when she and Ralph were at their Tony’s Chapel Church where Jane saw a lady in front of her with a beautiful bracelet.

Always with paper and a pencil, she began to draw the design of the bracelet, when Ralph put his hand on her’s to have her stop. The church service was not the proper place for Jane to be drawing out designs.

As time passed, Jane’s art would be seen in Oak Ridge, Morristown’s Rose Center, featured on television’s “Tennessee Crossroads” show, while a piece of her work has been donated to Walters State’s permanent display.

Plans are for pieces of her work to be included in an ETSU project which takes Tennessee art across the state. Her work is being shown this weekend at the Cumberland Gap folk fest, and will be featured at Lafollette’s Louie Bluey gathering on September 30.

“I Hope people enjoy my works”, Jane ended. “Donnie Simonton is now my apprentice while Naomi and William Mason have termed my style as ‘Afro-lachian’ which takes in the people and area that I live. When an inspiration hits me, I have to get it out of my system and begin the work. My inspiration comes from whatever God sends me, and I truly believe that I have an old soul inside that helps me create my art. It’s a true blessing from God.”