Welcome to “Get Inspired”. A series of interviews and stories about our Studio Art Class instructors.
For this month, we’ll be focusing on Deborah Rodriguez. She has been in the local Tampa art scene since the 1980’s and has continued to grace the region with her timeless collages, paintings, and photographs about her life and culture.
Take a dive into the rich history of Deborah’s life and inspiration that starts with another local legend of civil rights fame!
Perched on the Riverwalk and USF’s campus lies a statue of a local legend. One who hails from a Tampa of a different time. The Tampa area of the 1950’s was certainly steeped in the momentum of the Civil Rights movement, which was just starting its stride. Development of the city was going strong and Central Avenue was the hub for black-owned businesses. One of those businesses, a small building nestled between all the hustle and bustle, was the office of one Afro-Cuban lawyer, the local legend in question, Francisco Rodriguez.
Having just passed the Florida Bar Exam and with the NAACP moving its Florida headquarters to Tampa, Rodriguez joined their cause. He fought many cases in court not just for the rights of his fellow black Americans, but for the schools to be desegregated.
However, in the midst of this civil activism, Rodriguez would return home to his wife Beatrice and his children, one of which couldn’t get enough of art.
That child was Deborah Rodriguez. Back then, Deborah’s job within the family was to answer the phones and take notes when her father’s clients would call. But now, Deborah is a local artist whom the Tampa Museum of Art has the pleasure of calling one of our regular teaching artists. Draped in a rich history of civil rights activism and the Tampa arts culture, Deborah has graced the region with her art for almost thirty years now. But it wasn’t easy.
“[Art] was a life choice. I chose the life of an artist,” Deborah says even though throughout her early life she didn’t have any formal art training. Tampa elementary schools back in the 1960’s didn’t have art classes, and by the time Deborah was in high school, her only art teacher didn’t take a shine to students of color. This was the case in college as well.
And yet, “It was a need inside of my heart and my soul, I needed to finish college,” Deborah says. After years of not returning to college, when she was in her thirties, Deborah decided to apply to the Ringling College of Art and Design in 1983. She was accepted!
“It was the very first time that I felt like I was speaking a language that I had been speaking all my life, but no one else understood,” Deborah recalls. “When I got to Ringling, everyone knew what I was saying. We understood the language…That was really the most amazing experience I’d ever had. I spoke the language of art, and they could too.”
Deborah had her parents to thank for this experience. She lived with them during her stay at Ringling. But her parents’ support wasn’t new. Francisco and Beatrice always made sure Deborah’s love for art was nurtured. She had been an artist ever since she was three-years-old, and her parents always bought her art materials to continue exploring. At Ringling, Deborah excelled in Fine Arts, experimenting with painting, sculpture, collage, and more.
This love for pushing artistic boundaries continued even after graduating from Ringling. While she supported herself by working part-time at Sears, Deborah kept well connected with the Tampa Art Council, the Tampa Museum of Art, and many other local art communities to supplement her finances. She even participated in the “Teachers in Schools” programs, where artists would teach sixth graders for six weeks.
This sparked Deborah’s love for teaching, and once Tampa Elementary schools finally started implementing regular art classes into their schools, Deborah was amongst the first 60 to be hired! Her long career in teaching art began in the 1980’s and didn’t stop until her recent retirement.
But retirement from working within the public school system didn’t mean retirement from art. Deborah continues to teach classes at libraries, museums, and even still substitute teaching in schools, helping others tell their own stories in her signature narrative quilt fashion.
“The patchwork quilt is a major symbol for me,” Deborah explains. “I use it in the work that I do. I use it in my paintings…I also use it in my collage work.” Harkening back to her father’s civil rights activism, Deborah draws inspiration from the enslaved people of the past. How they used quilts to communicate paths to freedom. “What I love to talk about is the messages,” Deborah says. “The way people over the years have used art to pass messages about our lives.”
Deborah also takes inspiration from African textiles which are frequently cut into strips and sewn together. “So the strips part is a very important element in my art as well. Squares and strips, those are my main things,” Deborah says. “But the meaning of it is that I am honoring my ancestors that worked so hard to free themselves. I want it known that those people [enslaved people] worked really hard, they freed themselves from slavery.”
Deborah’s rich history in showcasing the past and present through her art continues to connect people to her culture, and their own cultures to this day.
Last year, Deborah headed the community project at our Juneteenth Cultural Celebration, helping hundreds of attendees all collaborate to create a large scale mix-media paper quilt, which was on display at the museum in 2025.
But, you still have a chance to tap into Deborah’s rich well of experience! If you’re interested in telling your own narrative with Deborah’s guidance, consider taking one of her many classes here at the Tampa Museum of Art! And to connect to similar roots, don’t miss out on attending our annual Juneteenth Cultural Celebrations!
