Spirit House
Surya Govender

In Thailand, a spirit house is the first structure put on a piece of property or building site. Replenished daily with offerings of food and incense, the spirit house protects the health and prosperity of whoever visits the place.

For Elaine Garrett to create her spirit house, it took one small door, a lot of determination and the ability to transform pebbles into jewels. Thus what had once been a prison for a bird became, as one viewer commented, a "home of our dreams".

Elaine's miniature Spirit House is not a traditional altar. It is an expression of her spirituality and life-long commitment to the transformation of everyday things into monuments of beauty. "My idea", says Elaine, "was that other people, when they saw it, could transport themselves inside and find a safe place in this crazy world." While her personal 'elements of transformation' include tarot, runes, dream interpretation and meditation, Elaine's work encourages us to discover for ourselves what 'elements of transformation' we need to stay grounded.

It all started with a door. In a motel room in Virginia Beach, Elaine started working with some foam core and balsawood she had picked up in Georgia. These were the beginnings of a miniature castle door, but as yet, there was no castle on which to hang its hinges. Back in Vancouver, and wandering down Commercial Drive, Elaine found the inspiration she had been seeking. "The way I work, the objects inspire the piece," she says.

The birdcage was sitting in the window of a secondhand shop, recently rescued from a local estate sale. It had been handmade, with a wooden tray floor and a panel roof painted to look like brick. Back at Elaine's studio, the bottom of the cage became the second floor of her new project, the roof was removed and a new one, with the original shape preserved and embellished, fashioned out of a pile of small wooden ice cream sticks. Then, there were the stone and mortar walls, the tiny furniture, the even tinier furnishings, and the view-holes through which to peek.

Using the principles of feng shui and her ability to listen to her materials, Elaine revisits her travels through her work, drawing on the beauty she has seen there. "When you're working on a piece like this, you tend to look at the world differently. An old broom could be thatch. Mud becomes your brick...you adapt and adjust and creative-think your way into useable materials. There's a lot of work, a lot of trial and error. But everything is transformable. Objects, spirits, attitudes --everything, in my opinion. I see the world as having endless possibilities."

As Elaine's work so wonderfully illustrates, having a creative eye is about being able to look at something and see something else...a new beauty. "I was raised that if it's broken, you fix it. You don't throw it out. And if you don't know how to fix it, use your common sense --lay out all the parts and put them back together...When people start with being grounded in a sense of spirit...that is when they begin to achieve their potential. It has to start at home. You have to carry that faith in yourself out into the world."

And as for her next project?

"I haven't found it yet."

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