Sally Willowbee

Sally Willowbee, born in 1946, and although not herself a Southerner, is important to Southern, lesbian-feminist activism. She founded one of the first, women’s land communities in the South: the Peacemaker Land Trust near Hinton, West Virginia. This land trust lasted from 1971 to 1973. She was there in 1972. In the 1990s, she helped establish the community land trust that preserved Sugarloaf Women’s Land Trust in Florida when Blue Lunden died in 1999. 

Sally Willoughby (later Willowbee), born in Des Moines, Iowa, moved to south New Jersey when she was in second grade. Her parents were Quaker [also known as Friends] peace activists. Her father, George Willoughby, worked for the American Friends Service Committee, and the Committee on Conscientious Objectors. As her father became more radical, he stopped holding regular jobs and gave all of his time to peace work. Her mother, Lillian Willoughby, was a trained dietician. Both parents participated in many peace protests, such as the Indo-China peace walk. Her parents became more and more radical, getting arrested and jailed at times. In West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, her parents helped start a branch of the Movement for a New Society, a national and international movement. They also founded The Life Center in Philadelphia as a base for that branch. The Life Center organized communal living among twenty houses. Her family lived there from 1971 to 1987. Seven or eight of those houses are still held in community land trusts. 

Sally Willowbee went to college at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. When she finished college, she totally immersed herself in the non-violent, peace movement. She worked with a group that her parents cofounded, a Quaker Action Group, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In addition, she helped to start one of the first communes in Philadelphia, Any Day Now, which was for draft resisters and peace activists.

Sally Willowbee got involved with the women’s movement, which inspired her to organize with other women friends one of the first consciousness-raising groups in Philadelphia. She began going to Sugarloaf Women’s Village in the Florida Keys in 1989. She used her considerable carpentry skills there to improve Sugarloaf’s five houses and one “chalet” (formerly a toolshed).

While at Sugarloaf, Sally Willowbee began creating what she called “a spoken book illustrated with slides,” titled Trashy Women: From Plastic Bags to Heavy Metals, Women Who Make Art from Recycled Materials. It was about women artists, many of them self-taught, making art out of recycled materials. These artists included Rainbow Williams, Mary Proctor, and others. In 2012, she wrote a book about outsider art sites near her home in Deptford, New Jersey, titled Found Artists: On Country Roads, Side Streets & Back Alleys of South Jersey, published in 2012. This was later developed into an exhibition and a film.

Sally Willowbee continues making art out of recycled materials. Recently, she made a series of lamps called Turned On Women or Enlightened Women, depending on your style. Her latest series is called Cosmic Bordello, which with some humor, is really about the protection of the Earth and the Universe and all of us who live on this planet.