The Artistic ‘Pollinator’

Situated near the Capital City Country Club is the home that “Katee built.” That’s Katee Tully, a presence in any setting and a woman who brings artistic magic with her wherever she goes.

A quick spoiler —  this is the same Katee Tully who, in the last year, has founded the Word Garden at Tallahassee Nurseries, key-noted the Women’s Leadership Institute at FSU, judged the Gadsden Arts Center’s Tri-state Watercolor Competition, became one of the prime movers in Downtown Quincy’s makeover and now imagines Word Shed, a venue where people will come to write, discuss and fall in love with words and thoughts.

This spring morning, Tully appears typically serene, dressed for the season in a white tunic and white slacks as she presents a visitor with a specially chosen poem to underline her hospitality. Yet a glance around the interior tells you this is no ordinary “Southern Belle’s” abode. This home is filled with the art Tully has created and the art she loves, whether tactile, visual or made of words.

And yes, in addition to having lived other lives as an academician, a master jeweler, a potter and a word and arts developer, Tully is also a visual artist herself. On the dining table, instead of fine china and candelabras, are hand-woven twig nests, each with a special resident — an egg, a turtle’s shell, small pieces of horn.

On another wall is a vertical mandala of clay images by Mary Donahue. In another corner is a 5-foot clay bird with its large fledglings made by a friend. These rooms are filled with what feels like “living” art. Tully says she likes to think of her art pieces in conversation with one another and moves them around to expand their relationships.

But how did this multi-hyphenate come to be? Tully, the oldest daughter of prominent Tallahassee developer Jim Tully, who helped create the Capital Regional Medical Center and Governor’s Square Mall, and his wife, Elaine, who ran a small preschool from her home, says her upbringing was unremarkable. Yet, her mother practiced her talents daily — singing, dancing, storytelling and “seeing beauty everywhere.” Perhaps some of her father’s organizational and “developer genes” were also thriving.

But growing up isn’t always a smooth journey. Tully says she’d begun “grown-up” life in a sorority at Louisiana State University. By that time, she’d come to understand that she was a lesbian, and the atmosphere at LSU was not conducive to her happiness.

“It was hard to be judged,” she said.

So, she left, went to North Carolina and found artistic and personal joy in becoming a master jeweler. Tully would go on to open four jewelry stores in the Southeast. She also earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at East Carolina University and spent the next 10 years there as the External Development Officer.

Tully pushes some of her light blonde hair behind an ear, giving her a Martha Stewart-esque casualness, as she details her next moves to the City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College and then Manhattan Community College. Later, she became the president of Continuing Education for the State of New York, where she experienced the tragedy of 9/11 firsthand.

“My office was right across the street, and I was in the lobby of the Twin Towers when the first plane hit the building.”

Tully managed to evacuate her staff before the second tower fell, and she later joined the commission that helped rebuild Lower Manhattan. And thus, her academic life was coming to an end.

With a move to St. Petersburg, Florida, she recreated herself as a working artist and the director of the Morean Arts Center and its famed Chihuly Collection. Through helping develop the city’s Warehouse Arts District, Tully became a respected potter and creator of large art installations in her own studio, the Poetry Bar. And she fell more deeply in love with the written and spoken word — a passion defining her next steps in the Capital City.

She returned to Tallahassee after her mother fell ill, and during a random visit to Tallahassee Nurseries, she struck up a conversation with childhood friend Paul Brock, owner of the expansive garden center.

“He had a gazebo that always sat unused,” Tully said. “A beautiful space but no one seemed to go there.”

Katee Tully founded the Word Garden at Tallahassee Nurseries, a place frequented by language lovers. Photo by Saige Roberts

Per her suggestion, that gazebo became the “Word Garden” and is now frequented during the week by language lovers who come to pick up one of 10 changing, free poems or short stories written by Tallahassee’s best authors. And one Sunday afternoon a month is devoted to poetic readings that consistently draw over 50 rapt listeners from the community.

And so, Tallahassee thanks the “pollinator,” as Tully describes herself, a woman so adept at painting visions that others can see, hear and imagine that they become reality.