[6] She credits her love for creating order out of chaos to growing up with five siblings (she was the third child of six total) in a family that moved four times before she was ten.

[5] Williams is perhaps best known for what art critic of the Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper Mary Abbe called "meticulously designed miniature books".

[8] Williams also constructs intricate multi-part boxes and other containers that display artifacts and natural specimens, along the lines of the 17th-century Wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonders.

[6] The inclusion in her art of feathers, grasses, flower petals, seedpods, and other fragile fragments that Williams collects on walks and bike rides reflects her passionate interest in the natural world.

Reflecting the liberal-arts environment, it includes a tiny Periodic Table of Elements and beakers; a miniature desk with typewriter and a copy of The Ambassadors by Henry James on it; and samples of water, maple seeds, dried thistles, and other specimens Williams collected from the prairie land and the arboretum on campus.