W+W
THE WILD WOMAN
l i v e
y o u r
i m p o s s i b l e
FALLING IN LOVE
V I N TA G E M A R K E T
T IPS&TR ICKS
T E L L +A L L
with your home
show girls
LEAVING WHEN
it’s good
C O U R A G E
&
RISK
on i t i d E s ’ r e m or t Barns R S U M M E
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b r. c o ff e e
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THE WILD WOMAN LI NDSAY MCPHAIL Editor In Chief JENNA BE NTON Senior Editor CI N DY CONNE R Senior Editor GABR IE L R AMIR E Z Photography/Photo Editor RACHE L SOU THMAYD Cover Photo Editor K ENNE SHA BUYCKS Contributor LACE Y F AR BE R Contributor K A T MANNIX Contributor PHO T O GRAPHY CONTR IBUTOR S Lahna Graham, Christine Sarah, Kara Stewart, Casey Zinkel W W W .T H E W I LD W OMANMAGAZINE.COM email: info@thewildwomanmagazine.com The Wild Woman Magazine ©2018. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any material from this issue in part or in whole is strictly prohibited.
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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
E DITOR ’S
L E T T E R
THE BIR TH Of Barnstormer’s
pg 04 pg 10
W I L D W O M E N pg 19 Of The West Coast Shows PR E TTY Progress
IN
SHOWING Your Age
pg 36
pg 41
W H E N S T Y L E pg 51 And Voice Collide C R E A T I N G A pg 53 Space For A Creator L E A V I N G pg 60 When It’s Good T O P A R T N E R pg 65 Or Not To Partner? F AL LING IN With Your Home 031
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LOVE
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EDITOR’S L E T T E R
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e spend so much of our lives hiding. We have been driven into the shadows by insecurity and selfprotection, rarely showing our authentic selves. We let everyone and everything around us tell us who we should be and how we should look. We let our fears dictate what is possible, never daring to dream the impossible. We hide, afraid we will never be good enough, embracing busyness as a lifestyle. And in that hiding, we miss opportunities to step into the light and heal, forgive, risk, and love.
I’m especially honored to launch our premier issue as the Barnstormer’s Edition. Every quarter we will have a different focus, always highlighting real women living their impossible. For my family, the Barnstormer’s Vintage Fair is just that; it is a dream we had no clue would explode into something so big, beautiful, and far reaching. It’s our privilege to fill these pages with the challenges, triumphs, heartaches, and victories of creators, dealers, promoters, producers, builders, and entrepreneurs in the vintage show, home décor, and design industries.
Thank you for joining our journey. We hope you The Wild Woman Magazine is an invitation to stand will be inspired to dig deep, get real with yourself, together and say ENOUGH. Enough pretending, and go after what feels impossible in your life! comparing, and competing. Enough negative self-talk and playing it safe. Enough hiding and Stay Wild, accepting lies. Enough putting others down Lindsay McPhail because they have what we think we want. Enough : @thewildwomanmagazine playing the victim. Enough living stories that no longer serve us. Enough beating ourselves up for our failures. We’ve simply had enough, haven’t you?
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KARI’S TIPS FOR STAYING WILD
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GATHER A TRIBE OF PEOPLE WHO WILL LOVE & SUPPORT YOU. MAKE IT A HABIT TO CHEER OTHERS ON. LOVE YOURSELF FOR EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE RIGHT NOW. STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO OTHERS. TRY NEW THINGS, EVEN IF YOU’RE AFRAID. BE WILLING TO FAIL.
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ONE WILD WOMAN
“BORN TO CREATE” K A R I
M C G R E W
“I’ve been creating since I was a toddler,” grins Kari as she grabs an old towel and wipes her hands. “My mom used to buy the ends of those big newspaper rolls and let me spread my supplies out on the floor and draw for hours. My grandmother took those drawings to an art gallery, and they told her I was talented. From that moment on, my family called me an artist. I guess I’ve always identified myself that way. It’s who I am.” You can tell Kari is an artist from the moment you walk into her home. She and her husband Adam, a real estate agent, are in the middle of a remodel, and their eye for design stands out even in the controlled chaos. “I love it when we can start to see it all come together,” says Kari as she gestures to the boxes of flooring stacked against a wall. “Adam and I love our home. We want it to be a reflection of who we are.” Pottery isn’t her only creative endeavor. Kari owned a successful hand-lettering business and is also an avid painter, among other pursuits. But she hasn’t always been confident in her art. There was a time when she had an art instructor say her style was too abstract. “I let that comment shape how I saw myself as an artist. I spent far too many years letting the opinions of others chase me into hiding. I didn’t want to take any risks with my art because I thought I wasn’t good enough. I was afraid people wouldn’t understand me.” Eventually, with encouragement from her husband and a few close friends and family members, Kari decided to go after her dreams. She was determined to share her art, even if she fell flat on her face. “The process of creating makes me come alive,” says Kari. “I want the world to see that. It is who I am. I feel more like myself when I’m creating. I don’t have to pretend to be someone else, I don’t have to try to fit in, and I can just be me. One day I decided to embrace the risk and I never looked back.” Kari also says her art has helped her make a connection on a spiritual level. “I didn’t realize until last year that I could use my creating time as a means to speak to my Creator. When I was able to connect the two and become intentional, it became this sacred space for me. It’s a safe haven. It’s my ultimate worship.” Kari has advice for other Wild Women who feel afraid or insecure about their creative process, “Love yourself enough to invest in risk. Just go for it.” W+W MAGAZINE
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AUGUST 3-4, 2018 CENTRAL POINT, OR
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HEADING TO A VINTAGE MARKET?
This issue is packed with great tips for shopping any show!
TIP #1 IF IT SPEAKS TO YOU DON’T PASS IT BY, IT MIGHT NOT BE THERE WHEN YOU GO BACK FOR IT! : @barnstormersvf 2
WWW.BARNSTORMERSVINTAGEFAIR.COM
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W+W MAGAZINE WWW.BARNSTORMERSVINTAGEFAIR.COM Lhana Marie Photography
Lhana Marie Photography
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arnstormer’s Vintage Fair was first produced in 2012 by mother daughter team, Cindy Conner and Lindsay McPhail. It’s an annual show that draws vendors from around the west coast to meet for one exciting and usually toasty show the first weekend of August. Live music, a slew of food trucks and thousands of buzzing shoppers add to the vibrant shopping experience this sweet show offers. Grab a cup of coffee or glass of wine if it’s after noon and cozy up to this impossible story of how Barnstormer’s was born. You just might be inspired to go after your very own impossible dream. Or at least we hope you will. For more information on Barnstormer’s Vintage Fair visit www.barnstormersvintagefair.com. : @barnstormersvf W+W MAGAZINE
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BIRTHING B A R N S T O R M E R ’ S
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L I N D S AY M C P H A I L
Maria Alexandra Photography
istorically, a barnstormer was a pilot who flew into open fields to give airplane rides for a small fee. Barnstormers were daredevils and risk takers, qualities that inspired us to create an event that has grown beyond our wildest dreams. Barnstormer Vintage Fair may look like an overnight strategic success. But our thriving show actually began with a crisis, a challenge, and a dream. When 2008 hit we went through a bit of a rough patch, along with the rest of America. We faced losing almost everything we had worked for, and then we faced another blow. Two of our sons were diagnosed with autism. Feeling overwhelmed, we moved home to the family farm. Through a series of miraculous events our family was nominated and chosen to receive the 200th home from ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition in 2011. Our involvement with Sparrow Clubs USA, paired with two sons on the autism spectrum, and the crumbling cinderblock house we lived in was apparently a recipe for good TV. Before we knew it, our broken little family was being broadcast worldwide.
Maria Alexandra Photography
Our new home is a dream. It’s spacious and beautiful, and truly a gift we can never repay. I wake up every morning and thank God for what we have. I’m not exaggerating, every day on my way to the coffee pot, I am still blown away that we live here. It will never get old. Our community is the best there is, and there are no words in the English language to communicate how grateful we are. Shortly after the show however, we realized we were going to have to figure out a way to pay for the new property taxes that came with our shiny new home. We weren’t sure how but we knew we were going to have to get creative.
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W+W MAGAZINE WWW.BARNSTORMERSVINTAGEFAIR.COM Lahna Marie Photography
O U R I M P O S S I B L E My mom Cindy, had just been to The Farmhouse Vintage Show in Washington. It awakened a spark inside her, and we began discussing what it would look like to host our own show on the tattered little farm we shared. Could we really pull off something that spectacular? We weren’t sure, but we gave ourselves permission to dream about the possibilities. Neither of us had any business experience. We knew nothing about what it took to produce or market a show, and we were starting with no budget. When I say no budget, I don’t mean a few hundred dollars. I mean Z-E-R-O dollars. Fortunately, mom and I are both resourceful when it comes to “tight budgets.” We may not have had college educations, or money, or experience but what we lacked in resources we made up for in pure old-fashioned hard work. We spent the summer cleaning out decades of trash and junk (not the good kind) from our barn in triple digit heat, while my kids did things like spray paint the inside of my van. No joke, we were just one shenanigan away from a full-blown I love Lucy episode. We tidied up the barnyard and ordered some porta-potties. We were gunna have a shindig if it killed us, and it almost did. That first year we used our mastery of skills in self-deprecating humor and flying by the seat of our pants, to somehow attract 20 vendors and over a thousand shoppers. I remember sending myself into hysterics the night before thinking no one would show up. If I’m honest, we both still do this every year, sometimes the night before or the week before. We take turns melting down while the other one is the confident encourager. Exhausted, delusional, tired, sweaty, and dirty from a weekend in our barnyard, we finished that first show thinking about how we would make the next year even better. We were hooked. We even managed to eke out enough profit to pay our taxes that year. The income was a bonus but what began to sink in was that we had just pulled off our impossible. Three years ago, we had outgrown our farm and faced the choice of either quitting or moving. We chose to move to the fairgrounds because it was the only place large enough to accommodate the thousands of shoppers we were bringing with us. It also had fancy amenities like running water, flushing toilets, and shade. : @barnstormersvf
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Our Barnstormer’s Vintage FairTeam: (From left to right.) Leigh Leaming, Morgan Dibetta, Cindy Conner, Lindsay McPhail, Marilyn Conner, Abbie Lasota , Kyndall Wiley & Dawn Wiley.
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W+W MAGAZINE : @barnstormersvf
Photo by Gabriel Ramirez Photography. Steerman provided by Mike Burrill Jr.
RISKING WITH THE ONES YOU LOVE My sister Abbie joined us as the show manager when we moved and we’ve been so blessed to work well together with 4 generations of women in our family, an auntie who is a dear friend and friends who have become family. I love that my 83-year-old Grandma and her friend Nancy are some of the first faces to greet shoppers at the ticket booth. It has not been an easy journey. We’ve made so many mistakes over the past seven years. A few years into the show we actually declared that we were done. We weren’t having fun and didn’t like having to make tough decisions. We told ourselves and everyone else we just weren’t business women, we made an announcement on Facebook and we thought that was it. But the show wouldn’t let us go, or our maybe it was our hearts that wouldn’t let the show go. Either way, we changed our perspectives, took on the role of business owners and found a way to make hard decisions without letting it rip our guts out each time. The beauty of partnering with people you love is that through the meltdowns and drama and babies and broken parts we can still see the heart of the person we love and cover for their shortcomings. We do hard things together through fear and challenges and financial hardships. We fight with each other and for each other. We make dumb decisions and often make each other laugh until we pee. We cry when we are yelled at by an unhappy shopper, then we slap the crier on the butt, reminding her to pull up her big girl panties and press on. Risking together has deepened our relationships and built a show that offers an atmosphere much like that of a Parenthood or This Is Us episode. We’re real, and crazy, and full of life and shortcomings. We’ve tried new things to make the show better, and have literally been booed by crowds. We’ve taken chances we never thought would pan out and had nearly 8,000 shoppers show up to cheer us on. I often wonder what would have happened if we would have let our gut wrenching fear and insecurity take over that day we said yes to our first show. And then I remember, nothing. Nothing would have happened if we had let fear have the loudest voice that day. Nothing would have happened if we had focused on all we didn’t have. Because nothing tends to be what happens when we only say yes to what’s comfortable and easy. How long will we keep doing this? As long as we want to. After that, who knows? But whatever it is, it won’t be nothing. 2 16 Photos by Gabriel Ramirez Photography