Folk artist's bones need resting place

Taft Richardson lived in the biblical valley of bones, a self-taught folk artist with a disciple's heart.

He read from a well-worn Bible, Ezekiel 37: "And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live?"

For nearly 40 years, he shaped the bones of animals into crucifixes, lizards, fish, cranes and the head of John the Baptist.

He thought about bones for a long time. And in what even Richardson took to be a crazy revelation, he one day stared at a pile of beef ribs, gnawed to the bone, stacked on a dinner plate.

Richardson saw a giraffe, and as a young man in his 20s, his life found purpose.

He was an artist who would sculpt bones to touch the spirit.

"You'll see a message there that you can gather and take back with you," Richardson once told an interviewer with the Folkvine Group, affiliated with the University of Central Florida and funded by the Florida Humanities Council. They recorded interviews, photos and a history of Richardson's art.

Last week about 50 friends and family gathered at the George Bartholomew North Tampa Center, 8608 N. 12th St., to celebrate Richardson's life and his art.

He died in 2008 of prostate cancer at age 65.

Parts of the ceremony, which included memories from family and taped interviews, were recorded by University of South Florida students. The event was sponsored by the school's anthropology department and Doretha's All Children Workshop Gallery, an outreach program of The Moses House.

The dreamed-of next step is to put Richardson's art in a museum. That takes money and a building, neither of which Richardson's supporters have.

His brother, Harold Richardson, has the artwork stored away.

"I'm just so glad he left a legacy behind," he said. "I refuse to let it die."

Richardson is included in an anthology of 75 Florida artists: "Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Art."

"He is certainly at the very top of the list, ... extraordinarily brilliant," said co-author and University of Central Florida folklorist Kristin Congdon.

Richardson would carry bones in his pocket "until they spoke to him," she said. He brought roadkill home and waited while it decomposed. He took death and decay and resurrected it into art, she said.

"It's like he had an idea about the wholeness of the world," Congdon said.

Taft and Harold Richardson were close. The brothers could complete each other's sentences.

But Harold Richardson at first didn't pay much mind to what his kid brother did.

"Who played with bones?" said the elder brother. But he learned it was more than an oddity. "That was his gift."

Taft Richardson did not cut the bones. He took what he found on his walks along the highways and byways and waited for nature to work naturally in his yard. Ants and sun could clean and bleach; Richardson studied the bones until he had a vision.

With crushed bone powder and glue, bones bonded and took form seamlessly - a crucifix, a bird, a pregnant woman.

"I think he had a vision of my birth," said granddaughter Sharita Moultry. She took a box of chicken bones discarded at last week's tribute to make crucifixes in her grandfather's honor.

His art made you stop and look, said Sulphur Springs' resident Norma Robinson.

"Your spirit automatically slowed down, and you listened to what he had to say," she said.

Delores Washington met Taft Richardson in the early 1980s when he was living near Young Middle School and she was working at Cyrus Greene Community Center.

"He was so passionate," she said. "He told me God gave him a gift to do this, and tears came to his eyes."

Richardson set up his sculptures in his yard and invited children from the recreation center. "He told them a story about life," Washington said.

In the early 1990s, Washington was at the North Tampa recreation center; Richardson had moved to a family home on Skagway Avenue in the Spring Hill section of Sulphur Springs.

He reached out to children again, doing special art projects with them at his home or at the recreation center.

Richardson rarely sold his art. Children, not money, he said, were important.

"He was real," said granddaughter Iyanna Moultry. "All he ever told me was just take care of the kids."

Jennifer Burnett married Richardson's nephew, Reginal Barnett. Richardson asked her one day to look at a box of bones. "I just saw a box of bones," she said. Richardson saw an elephant, she said, "And in three minutes he made an elephant out of those bones."

He was one of those people who find the creative in things most people overlook, she said.

"He died a poor man, but he was rich in spirit," Harold Richardson said.

To view the video and interviews on Taft Richardson, go online to www.folkvine.org/richardson.