Wendy Snow Walker to be new leader at county's arts council
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on December 4, 2016 1:45 AM
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Wendy Snow Walker, new director of the Arts Council of Wayne County, poses for a photograph inside the Art Market at the Arts Council of Wayne County.
As the new director of the Arts Council of Wayne County, Wendy Snow Walker wants to really grow and increase the classes and other activities the group is now offering.
The 47-year-old took over the position last month from Sarah Merritt, who is moving to Pennsylvania this month. Mrs. Merritt was the arts council's director for 10 years.
"Sarah has built such a great foundation in terms of building the classes and connecting with the artists and working with the city planners," Ms. Walker said. "The public art is already well established.
"I want to take those foundation blocks that she's already got in place and see how we can build those to make an even stronger arts community."
Children will play an important part of that plan.
"Children are really important to me in terms of our future and their future and having the arts council be a creative and expressive place for them," Ms. Walker said. "We want to build on the future generations. We also want to build our audiences across demographics and create programs for everybody."
Ms. Walker also believes that art should be accessible to everyone in the community.
"The experiences should be engaging," she said. "The performances should be powerful. All of those things are key elements in creating a really creative and artistic atmosphere."
Her duties will be primarily working on making sure the arts council has enough funding for its programs. Secondly, she wants to work on the human connections -- with students, families, artists, city planners and other stakeholders.
"And just creating different classes and brainstorming different events, building on the events that are already happening," Ms. Walker said. "I need to make sure everything that is already happening continues to happen and grow."
Ms. Walker also plans on using her theater and performing arts background to expand programs at the arts council.
She was born in the Washington, D.C. area, but moved to rural western Maryland farm when she was a girl.
She learned to sew when she was just 7, and that led to one of her careers of making thousands of costumes for dance companies and theater companies up and down the east coast, some college shows and even in Australia and Scotland.
"My mom taught me how to sew and it just took off from there," Ms. Walker said. "I can look at a piece of fabric and I can see the shape it's supposed to be."
She was a drama major at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., which was a liberal arts school.
"I always knew I wanted to be on stage and be a theater person," Ms. Walker said.
Following college, she started auditioning and got some work, but then got married and had a daughter and decided to stay home with her child for a few years.
When her daughter was older, Ms. Walker took a teaching position at a Catholic school in western Maryland, which was also looking for someone to start a performing arts program. She taught science, French, creative writing and ballet there for 16 years.
Three days after her daughter graduated from high school, Ms. Walker went to New York to audition for "Macbeth" and was cast as Witch No. 1. She spent that summer on stage in New York.
For a number of years, she traveled up and down the east coast performing and doing costuming and stage managing.
When Netflix moved to Baltimore to produce "House of Cards," Ms. Walker got a call to be a background extra. Then she got a call from the casting company and was bumped up to a secretary on the show, which turned out to be a two-year role, until Netflix dropped the series.
A few years later, Ms. Walker began looking for an arts management position and was hired in a town outside of Pittsburgh, Pa. While there, she helped interview the many military veterans, turning their stories into poems and those poem into songs and adding choreography to produce a tribute to the veterans.
Then Ms. Walker found the arts council director's job in Goldsboro and applied.
The arts have always been important to Ms. Walker. Her grandfather was a painter. Her mother was a soloist with the Washington Ballet and her aunt was an actor.
"There's always been art in my family," she said. "I don't know any other way to live. I can't imagine living any other way.
"I feel like in one way or another, everybody finds a connection to the arts. If you work in a factory all day and have the weekends off, what are you going to do? You're going to go to the movies or listen to the radio. You're going to do something that has some connection to the arts. It doesn't matter what your job is, everybody finds something creative that soothes them through the arts."