My name is Glenda and my studio name is Whimsical Windows and Words.  

 

I’ve always had an love for windows and as a child, on the first day of school, I would instinctively  ask the teacher if I could sit by the window. 

About 7 years ago, when it was time to replace my old wooden windows with energy efficient windows in my home  I realized that if I didn’t rescue my old windows they would end up in the landfill. They became my canvas and I picked up a paint brush and I began to paint and the ideas just kept coming.  

Since I’ve become an artist with the WAVE I have never needed to go out and find windows, they just somehow appear in my yard.

 

This year a good friend of mine suggested that I create “functional art” and he challenged me to paint on fabric and then create pillows from the painted fabrics.  I began. Sewing has never been a strength and it is definitely one of my least favourite tasks. They have come together magically, all of them fun and full of colour. 

 

95 % of the art the I produce is repurposed. I consider myself an artist with a purpose to repurpose. Whether it’s windows, thrifted fabric, driftwood, copper from electric wiring, old buttons or tossed cans of paint. It finds its way into my art. 

 

I love to paint small whimsical houses or build them from driftwood. Everybody needs to feel like they belong and houses represent  a place of community and fellowship.  

 

Sometimes when I hear news stories  that touch the greater community such as the most recent discovery of the unmarked graves of innocent indigenous children, the only way that I can deal with my sadness is by creating. I painted this sunset on hand dyed fabric  with a pair  children’s worn out shoes and the written words “Great Spirit…we weep.” The picture is finished by carefully stitched quilting, by my friend Jacque Pohl.  The quilting adds definition  and flow.  It is framed in a barrel hoop, and structured to appear like a drum. 

I remember too, when the news story of Tina Fontaine broke.  I felt like something also broke inside of me and I sat down and created the window called “drumming our sisters home”. It  was later gifted to an indigenous elder. 

 

COVID has been a challenge for me over this past year and a half. At first I thought that it would free up time for me to create, and that has happened but the truth is that I miss community. I miss large groups of people hanging out together, sitting shoulder to shoulder enjoying time together and no doubt I have really missed the two weekends when crowds of people wash in for the Interlake Wave.