Excellence in Arts
Evelyn Wool Sponsored By:
Farm life proves to be inspiring for Excellence in Arts Award winner By RANDY CAPPS
T
he idea of leaving the hustle and bustle of the Northeast behind and trying out life on a farm is hardly
new. But the journey from New York City to Connecticut to a picturesque farm outside of Selma has been anything but standard for Evelyn Wool and her family. In the process of learning how to raise goats and run a farm, Wool sharpened her writing and drawing abilities. It’s for her contributions in that area that she’s been named the 2022 Johnston Now Honors Excellence in Arts Award winner. “With a lot of planning and intention, but also a little bit of right place, right time, good fortune,” she said of ending up in Johnston County. “We actually made the move after my husband was transferred down here by his company at the time. We had been talking about what we wanted to do in our next phase of life. We were done with the really cold, really disastrous weather situations, and we were thinking we’d like to try a different part of the country. “I really love Johnston County. I feel 6 | [ JOHNSTON NOW ]
like I came to a place where I could call home almost immediately. In setting up our farm we had no fences, no shelters, and my husband learned how to do some of the building things. Our neighbor behind us would see him working and come over with a giant backhoe and say, ‘Hey, can I help you push in fence posts?’ Just from that, ‘Hey, can I give you a hand? Welcome!’ It felt very comfortable that we were in the right place.” That’s how the Wool Family Farm came to be. And, as it turns out, farm life provided plenty of artist inspiration. “The farm has provided an endless supply of stories, and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I’ve actually been able to take the time to write down,” she said. “Right from the start, I had a bunch of encouragement from my friends and co-workers back up north. They said, you know, ‘We want to see what’s going on. Send us stories.’ So, one of the very first things I did was set up a magazine-style website (evelynwool.com) that people could see what we were doing. I had several crazy adventures right from the beginning. So, I started writing stories as best I could.”
Wool has always enjoyed writing, even if the lion’s share of her ability had to be channeled into a more structured format. “I’ve really been writing my whole life,” she said. “I really enjoyed creative writing when I was in school. Then I decided to pursue what I thought would be kind of the best thing for me career wise, which was industrial engineering. With that, my creative writing went to formal, reportwriting style. And I was kind of in that mode for my entire career until we came down here. It was a challenge to get back into creative writing. It really was.” She managed it, and thanks to a little help from the Johnston County Arts Council, she learned how to illustrate, too. “A couple of my stories, I started thinking in the back of my mind, might make good children’s books,” she said. “But I didn’t really have any idea how to go about creating a children’s book. I didn’t want to just go and hire somebody to illustrate, not knowing if what I wanted to do was going to turn into anything. And I got introduced to the Arts Council artists early on. It was a goat friend, who had a friend who was on the council and
