- City
- Toronto
- Booth
- Nathan Phillips Square
Booth 230
Helena Wehrstein
My passion: breathing new life into outmoded/discarded/unwanted stuff, by-products of over-consumption and planned obsolescence.
My work: a response to the hairy times we live in (eco disasters/political divides/social and personal trauma), focusing on healing and maintaining hope, sometimes with a pinch of humour. I start with drawings, but the end results are often quite different!
My challenge: use only pre-used stuff if possible. My designs are inspired, defined and limited by available materials: e-waste, recycled wood, other junk, and leftover items from my textile-making days. It is so satisfying to dream up new ways of using this interesting stuff to keep at least a little bit out of the waste stream. I embrace and use the inherent imperfections in pre-used stuff! As Leonard Cohen says: ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in’.
