My bigggest art project: rennovating an 1890 Victorian House and Cottage

During the last five years, I have been blessed with one of the biggest creative projects I've ever taken on: rennovating two Victorian houses, nestled in the historic Salishan neighborhood of Blaine, Washington, on the Canadian border. It has been a completely satisfying experience to bring life back to the houses and gardens.

Here is a bit of its history, as researched and written by Jack Kintner, who also took the photo of me.

"With courageous spirit the [widowed] mother endured the privations and hardships of frontier life, exerting every effort to provide for her family, and entered (claimed) a homestead, on which she proved up. After years of unceasing industry the land was transformed into a fertile tract and many improvements were added to the place."

_{Roth, History of Whatcom County, vol. II

Story by Jack Kintner}

Photos by Mindy Newby and Alana Lea

This was Catherine Kingsley, who with her husband Solomon and small family came to the area in 1871. Some of the last big Indian potlatches were yet to be held, and the rivers and streams the pioneers used for highways still ran black with the backs of spawning salmon several times a year...

But Solomon Kingsley died the year after they arrived, leaving her in a true wilderness with three children and no title to the land she lived on. She was to live another 26 years to see the area prosper beyond her wildest dreams. Shortly before she died a small house was built in the Victorian style in a far corner of what by then had become the Kingsley Ranch, at the time being subdivided into lots in the south part of Blaine, Washington.

Photos by Mindy Newby

That small place, to which another even smaller house was added later, is now 1047 Garfield, the place where Alana Lea does her art. Like Catherine Kingsley, she's faced some hard work alone, only a part of which was transforming the funky old house into the podium of her artistic vision, a panoply of surfaces, textures, comfort and convenience, softness and surprise, with plants growing everywhere, something she's done since her days as a young girl growing sweet potatoes in her mother's kitchen in San Francisco. Like a cathedral, it draws you in and around and through and beyond, and though you never quite arrive you're always there. A wheel in a wheel...