A Haines City Artist Is Painting a Future as Colorful as Her Roots
Local Haines City Artist Mary Cruz Ruiz has a passion that reaches beyond her paintbrush to making spaces for art, culture, and community to come together and leave a legacy that lasts for years to come.
The first giant mural appeared on the outside wall of Haines City Flowers while the Ruiz family was away in Mexico. Fifty feet wide and bursting with orchids that are native to both Florida and the state of Oaxaca, it was painted in secret by their daughter. When her parents came home, they wept. It is still as vibrant today as the moment they saw it for the first time. The mural remains a gift of beauty to their customers and Haines City residents alike.
more than flowers
The shop at 2551 U.S. Highway 17-92 North has been many things over the years. When the Ruiz family first arrived in Haines City, they ran a CD shop. Then it was piñatas. Then Western wear and boots. They sold flowers too. MaryCruz Ruiz grew up working in the shop as a teenager, making small arrangements alongside her mother, Veronica.
Then, around the start of COVID-19, the business became Haines City Flowers. The Ruiz family stayed open when other businesses could not, serving hundreds of neighbors through an open window when they needed funeral flowers. She recalled it as a devastating time of loss. The trust they built during that season has never left.
The Artist
MaryCruz Ruiz, now 26, considers herself a visual artist, painter, sculptor, amateur carpenter, and florist, but she did not always know exactly what to do with all of her passions.
Ruiz says she spent her whole life watching her family build something from almost nothing, pivoting and adapting for decades to keep pace with a community that kept changing around them.
The mural on the flower shop was her way of saying: I see what you built, and I want to add to it. She titled it “Welcome to My Orchid Garden.”
“There are amazing orchids native to Florida. There are beautiful orchids native to Mexico, so this is bridging that gap for me,” Ruiz said. “It’s a representation of what we’ve built, what we’re building, and where we come from.”
It doesn’t take long to sense her passion for art, and her dreams are bigger than just making a name for herself.
Back to Her Roots
After high school, she moved to Colorado Springs to study architecture at community college before realizing the rigid structure of that field wasn’t right for her. She returned to Florida and started working at Frog Song Organics in Gainesville, a organic farm she describes with love and affection. There, she developed programs with the Alachua County school system and the University of Florida, teaching post-harvest and food safety skills to adults with disabilities so they could apply for jobs. She led youth groups around the garden. She taught people how to harvest, how to cook, and how to connect with the land.
All of it circles back to the same instinct: Teach people. Give them tools. Give them beauty. Give them something that lasts.
cultivating beauty at Home
Ruiz is back home in Haines City and working toward something she has been building for two years. Her goal is specific and pure: to make Haines City beautiful, and to use public art to tell the stories of the people who made it what it is.
“I want to connect history and culture and the community’s voices,” she said. “And connect the ecology of Central Florida. People don’t know the native plants or animals that were here before all of these apartment complexes. There isn’t a sense of identity toward the natural landscape here.”
She has been attending Haines City Commission meetings, presenting ideas to the CRA, and sending mockups and proposals to city officials. The response has been encouraging, but slow.
Ruiz shared, “They’re very supportive, but getting to the part that leads to direct action has been really challenging.”
CRA Manager Alex Abraham has spoken with her about the permitting challenges that come with large-scale public murals on city property. “It is a long game,” she said, but she is eager.
In the meantime, she has been building experience. This past Juneteenth, she was invited by NERG, a Haines City nonprofit focused on community building and cultural celebration, to do live painting at a community event. She has been knocking on doors asking local businesses if they are interested in a mural on their building.
A moment of Serendipity
Earlier this year, she walked into the Boys & Girls Club of Haines City to pitch a project and found herself in the presence of a kindred spirit painting a mural on the back wall of the basketball court.
His name is Kent McAllister. He has been an art teacher for roughly 30 years and lives in Lakeland. They are now collaborating, with Ruiz helping fill in the lower portions of the mural that Mallister can no longer easily reach. It didn’t take long for him to recognized her artistic talent and passion for the community.
What started as a chance encounter has become a genuine partnership, and McAllister has been generous with what he knows, including this: The contract for the Boys & Girls Club mural took him three years to secure.
“It’s OK,” she said, “I’m in it for the long run.”
Blooming into the future
Ruiz recently submitted a proposal to the Polk Arts and Cultural Alliance seeking a grant of up to $5,000 to fund a community mural. The project as she sees it would not just be her painting a wall. It would include a public event where yong and old alike share stories, then decide on what the mural should depict with imagery that ties the history and Polk County leaving something permanent and beautiful.
“We have so many people moving into the area,” she continued, “I want to collect stories and see who in Polk County has really created an impact.”
“Without a sense of knowing where you are, what was here before, what was beautiful, and hard, and true about this place, you lose something.”
– MaryCruz Ruiz, Artist
This idea reflects how she thinks about art on a broader spectrum. A wall is not just a wall. It is a place to put something that will outlast the moment, something that connects the people who already know this community with others still finding their way here.
She is not waiting for permission to get started. She is selling wholesale flowers, teaching floral workshops, looking into art markets across the county, collaborating on murals while applying for the ones she wants to do on her own. She plans on reaching out beyond Haines City, studying the process to apply for grants and city approval, and learning how to ask the right people the right questions.
MaryCruz Ruiz says her work can be found at @CreacionesDeMaryCruz on Instagram. She can be reached at [email protected] for mural inquiries. Haines City Flowers is located at 2551 U.S. Highway 17-92 North.
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Photos and artwork, Courtesy of MaryCruz Ruiz.
