Artist turns trash into treasure
Rita Brown channels Northern inspiration into recycled glass sculptures
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Friday, June 24, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Rita Brown wouldn't call herself an artist. But others would.
Rita Brown brought her inukshuk's made from glass recycled from the Yellowknife dump to the Aboriginal Day celebrations at Somba K'e Plaza on Tuesday. - Jessica Davey-Quantick/NNSL photo |
"It's funny because I've met several people from here who are artists who have said, 'Rita you've gotta stop calling yourself a crafter.' I guess I just feel I'm a simple ordinary person like anybody else," she said. "It's an honour to be called an artist."
It might have something to do with her medium. Brown creates art out of trash, using glass recycled from the Yellowknife dump to make inukshuk statues.
"The dump is like a Walmart - a Northern Walmart," she said.
She started making the inukshuks in 2008, when her three sisters visited Yellowknife, and is still doing it even though she doesn't live here full-time anymore.
She and her husband retired to Humboldt, Sask. in 2010, after 35 years in Yellowknife. The couple took 450 pounds of Yellowknife glass with them. They visit each summer, and every year she leaves with buckets of glass.
"People even donate windows to me if they have it," said Brown. One of her acquisitions was a tinted window from a school, secured after a friend tipped her off. "I whipped out there and I got this big piece of dark glass ... It's fascinating when I go down south and I tell the story, the people are just amazed. I have to show them pictures, some people have never been to the North. They haven't seen the dump, they don't understand what it means to recycle from the dump."
Many of her pieces are small ornaments but her biggest piece to date weighed in at nearly 50 pounds, made from a friend's broken outdoor table top. Unlike many of her pieces, which have travelled across Canada and around the globe, that one went to its new home in the back of her car.
Some of her more recent projects have incorporated colours, thanks to donated stained glass, and a lot of it comes from friends driving buckets of Yellowknife glass south for her.
"I always have my sources for my glass," she said. "But I like to try to get as much of (it) from here. And I get all of my bus stop shelter glass from here, it doesn't come from anywhere else."
Brown said one of her favourite designs is one called Aurora, inspired by the Northern lights.
"I don't do it for a business, it's therapeutic for me, and when I'm doing it I am always thinking of the North. I know that maybe sounds a little weird but it makes me think of the people back here and my life here," said Brown. "You'll fall in love with this place. It's very warm here."
That's why she keeps making the inukshuks - they keep her connected to the North.
"For me it makes me think of the true North where I lived for more than half of my life and brought my family up, and the warmth of the people that live here that have developed this land. It's just a symbol of the North and it's something that I take with me," she said.
"It's in my heart. I'll always be from the North."
