Sandra Walker spent most of her adult life, 44 years, in Europe where she taught art at schools for children of U.S. military personnel. When she and her husband decided to move back to the U.S., they weren’t sure where they wanted to live.
“We had the whole country to choose from,” Sandra said. “It was good on the one hand, but on the other hand I hadn’t lived here in more than forty years, so where do you go? There were almost too many choices. We had children on the West and East coasts. I decided to retire in the spring of 2017. It was a quick decision for me. So, we didn’t have a lot of time to pick a place.”
Most of her years in Europe were spent in Germany, but the last four years she was in Brussels, Belgium. Her husband, Ted, a digital photographer/mapmaker, also worked for the U.S. government. After making the decision to retire, they had only two months to find a place to land.
Then Ted was doing some business in Fayetteville when he saw a poster for Eureka Springs at the airport. He flew home and researched Eureka Springs before announcing that was where they should move.
Initially Sandra was not too sure about moving to a town they had never actually visited on the strength of the attraction of a poster in an airport. But time was short, and so she agreed to try it for a couple years.
“Now I’ve been here seven months and I’m happy,” Sandra said. “I want to stay. We chose Eureka Springs because it’s an art town with a kind of European flavor. Ted thought it would be a good fit for us and it turns out that it is.”
Sandra works primarily in dry media, working on graphite with colored pencil and pastels, but she dabbles in watercolor. She prefers plant and flower studies, portraits, and landscapes.
“I love being in a town with a lot of other artists,” she said. “I was lucky enough to fall into the Plein Air group of Eureka Springs, a small group of Eureka Springs painters who paint outside from April to November. Jody Stevenson is the founder. We work on Wednesday mornings. I was lucky enough to also find the Holiday Island Art Association and I belong to that, as well. This year I volunteered to coordinate the Holiday Island Crafts Guild.”
Another advantage of Eureka Springs, they found, was a reasonable cost of living, including for housing.
It was a huge step moving back to the States after so long in Europe.
“It was not just a change in the environment,” she said. “A full household had to be moved across the ocean. We had to re-establish a household and to rebuild a social circle and rebuild a life. Usually when I move it takes a year to re-establish a life, but it only took about six months in Eureka Springs. The best thing about this town is people are so open and accepting. I’m making friends. I was lucky enough to meet Mariellen Griffith early on and she just took me under her wing saying, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s do that.’ She’s a book author, a Master Gardener and an artist. She is a Renaissance woman who does many things well. There are several of those in town.”
Walker’s husband comes along with her to most of her art functions. “My husband laughs and says, ‘I’m mostly hanging on to her coattails,’” she says. “He also is a cake baker. He is just enjoying the area. He feeds the birds and we have quite a collection of birds and wildlife in the backyard. That is especially helpful for me as an artist as we take pictures and eventually they will find their way onto a canvas. I want to do more of the wildlife around here. I just haven’t gotten started with that yet.”
Sandra hasn’t found the winter that has been abnormally cold to be a challenge.
“I was born and raised in upstate New York, in Buffalo,” She said. “No, the winter has not discouraged me. It was a little colder than we were used to, but nothing like Buffalo. I would have liked more snow.”
Sandra has found outlets to sell her work, The Jewel Box and The Roxy. Eleven pieces are on display at The Roxy this month, which is featuring her as their artist of the month.
Sandra is also a yoga teacher and teaches Saturday morning classes at the Fire Om Earth Retreat Center on Mill Hollow.