Billy Biggs Bliss

Billy Biggs Bliss was born just before the Great Depression in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father’s success as a salesman meant that she was transplanted regularly as the family moved around the country with his work. She was an artist from her earliest days; she made her own beautifully crafted paper-dolls and sketched whatever caught her eye instead of using a camera.

The family moved to Birmingham just in time for her to enroll in Birmingham-Southern College where she graduated with a degree in foreign languages. She wanted to attend The Art Institute in Chicago for graduate studies but there was a World War raging, so her parents steered her toward something more “practical.” She dutifully completed a Diploma in Business at Columbia University in New York City just as World War II ended.

She returned to Birmingham and in no time, the beautiful, cosmopolitan girl fell in love with a handsome medical college student and, in 1950, she found herself transplanted once again, this time to a small Alabama town called Talladega where her talents found outlets in flower arranging, gardening, interior design, needlework, historic preservation, and painting.

Her philosophy for life is best described by her favorite hymn “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.”