Mother Earth and the power of the feminine in Forsyth County.
By Coy Archer — Photos by J. Sinclair

One Sunday afternoon, Jim Sanderford returned from one of his many driving tours of the country. “I found something you and the boys need to see,” he told his wife, Luli.

Living on Summit Street in the West End with their two young sons at the time, Luli wasn’t ready to move to the country. She had an emotional investment in the old Victorian gingerbread house they called home, and she was enjoying living without the smell of sheetrock. Despite her reservations, she admits, “I loved the notion of raising the boys where they had wide-open spaces.”

The Sanderfords piled into their VW Vanagon and drove the 20 minutes to Pfafftown to see what Jim had discovered. Parking on a knoll, the family walked to where the land opened up to a beautiful meadow surrounded by woods. “It felt free and wild, a perfect place to raise our boys,” Luli recalls. She was sold.

By the time the couple finished building their log house, which was heated by solar energy most of the year and with wood in the winter, their sons, Dean and Jes, were 9 and 6. The boys played a vital role in the day-to-day operation of the property, helping gather firewood, working side-by-side with their parents in the gardens, learning to be energy-efficient, and gradually becoming all-around environmentalists. “We taught them to respect the earth,” Jim says.

For Luli and Jim, self-professed hippies, it was a lifestyle and a land ethic that stressed “living simply so that people could simply live.” With gardens and trees planted and fences erected, the family began building a barn for the animals they planned to adopt. Before long, the Sanderford farm was populated with horses, llamas, goats, and a tame pack of dogs.

It was paradise. Then tragedy struck when Luli and her sister, Linda, were visiting their mother. “She died right in front of us,” Luli recalls. “Literally alive one moment and dead the next.”

Devastated by the loss of their mother, the sisters worked through their grief and eventually channeled their mother’s spirit by asking each other what she would have done in hard times like these.

“We threw ourselves into our art,” Luli says. It was a simple act of self-expression that ultimately sowed the seeds of something much larger.

While her sister taught herself to weld, Luli continued to draw inspiration from her home’s surroundings and began making rustic furniture out of trees. As art pieces accumulated, the sisters added plants that Luli was already selling from her greenhouse each spring. They dubbed their modest enterprise Whimsical Women.

Surprised by the sense of empowerment their venture gave them, the sisters had an epiphany: Why not work together to foster the same sense of empowerment in fellow women artists? Thus, Whimsical Women the festival was born.

Organized as a co-op of never-before-seen women artists, members served as festival volunteers in exchange for the opportunity to sell their creative wares. While there was a booth fee, Luli points out that “the group was never intended to be a money-making thing…merely a venue to support women artists.” And to that end, each artist gets 100 percent of what she sells.

As word spread and Whimsical Women’s customer base grew, Luli and Linda realized they should extend membership to women who were already established in the art community. What started as a way for two women to cope blossomed into a festival of and for the feminine. “It really is a pretty cohesive group of women artists,” Luli says.

Today, the Sanderford farm in Forsyth County serves as the annual site for Whimsical Women’s fall festival. It is a living testament to the mother who gave birth to the original Whimsical Women, Luli and Linda, and whose spirit touches the soul of every festival participant.

The farm is much quieter these days. The Sanderford boys have since grown up and moved west to Colorado in search of even larger wide-open spaces. For now, Luli and Jim Sanderford are happy to sit and relax in the shade of the maple trees they planted 25 years ago, patiently waiting for autumn’s colorful display and the return of the Whimsical Women.

For more information on becoming a Whimsical Artist or on the upcoming fall festival, visit www.whimsical-women.blogspot.com.