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GLASS Kim Webster ’76 has found an artform recreating flowers, veggies and succulents that light up the night
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By Patricia Hluchy Photography by Dawn Gelbaugh
SPRING 2022
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OR THE 24TH WINE COUNTRY FILM FESTIVAL in California in 2010, Kim Webster
’76 donated a glass creation that went to actor Martin Sheen for his humanitarian work. The late actress Carrie Fisher purchased one of Kim’s illuminated floral pieces at a Berkeley art gallery. The Hamilton native has also produced glass sculptures on commission for numerous individuals as well as a few institutions—she fashioned a glass triptych for the meditation room at the Kaiser Hospital in Antioch, California, and collaborated on a wall piece for the Birth Center at John Muir Health in Walnut Creek. Still, it wasn’t until her late 30s that Kim, now 63, found her creative groove. She is the daughter of a physician and a nurse/homemaker/volunteer. Her family home was full of music, fine craft and lively discussion. One of her three siblings led the way to having a career in the arts: her brother, William Webster ’60, is a prominent actor in Toronto. And Kim says that with the encouragement of her parents, she was “always making things” in clay as a young child and, later, sewing up a storm. After attending HSC for Grades 12 and 13 and then getting a degree in English literature and business at the University of Guelph, she held a variety of jobs, including what was then the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation. It was at Queen’s Park, where Kim worked in communications, that she met her husband of 29 years, cinematographer and film editor Barry Stone. He strongly encouraged her to pursue her artistic impulses. Another catalyst for shifting to life as a creator was the adventurous couple’s three-month honeymoon in India and Nepal. “The fact that people with so little were able to smile and have babies and invite us to their homes,” says Kim, “made me realize 34
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Kim’s succulents and maize on display at the annual Autumn Lights Festival at the Gardens of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California.
that there is a kind of universal safety net that wants and helps us to survive. It gave me the courage to follow my heart.” Eventually, Kim approached a friend who worked in glass and asked if she could “hang out in her studio and do some work in exchange for time to fool around with her kilns and the glass,” says Kim. “After I spent some time there, she suggested, ‘Why don’t you study it?’”
Barry and Kim playfully paddle the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories in 2016.
Kim went on to do a summer course in glass at Oakville’s Sheridan College and then a three-year craft and design diploma there, graduating when she was 40. While at Sheridan, she created numerous glass fruits and flowers, which led her to adopt the email name “glass gardener,” now her artistic handle. “It was clear back then,” she says, “that glass was my medium.” She and her husband moved to Oakland, California, a year or two after she had finished at Sheridan. There, in addition to doing glass work, Webster started a gardening business and did some accounting on the side. For the gardening, she hired another native Canadian and lover of plants, Tara Gill, to help her. Tara, a photographer and graphic designer who has been one of Kim’s best friends for two decades, urged Kim to make glass versions of succulents that grow in the desert, such as agave. “She’s my muse a little bit,” says Kim. “So, I started to noodle on it, and the first succulent I created sold immediately. I don’t really like the part of selling my work, but that was encouraging.” Tara, who lives in Fremont, about a 35-minute drive from Oakland, asserts that “Kim is compelled to make things. The word that always comes to mind when I think of her is ‘whimsy.’ But her creativity isn’t just limited to glass. She makes pajamas for all her grand-nieces and -nephews in Canada every year. And with her customary love and attention to detail in every stitch, she made receiving blankets with beautiful embroidered edges when my son, André, was born. And then she knitted a colourful patchwork blanket for me when I turned 50.” As for her artwork, early on Kim began putting LED lighting into her glass pieces. “I always had in mind that these big plants would light up,” she says. “And it’s the best thing to see one of those plants at dusk gradually turning into something else at night—the light really kind of infuses them with life.” Kim rents time at a couple of Bay Area glass-blowing studios about one day a week, but she also works on projects in a workshop in her backyard built by her husband. That’s where she, with Barry’s help, installs the lighting in her glass creations and mounts them onto their non-glass bases. One of the things Kim loves about her artistry, she says, is that when she makes a piece for a private residence, “it’s like a gift, one that they’re going to enjoy every day of their lives henceforth. There’s a relationship through the glass—it’s a way of connecting.” Kim observes that HSC, with teachers who cared to really know each individual student and a House system to create a sense of community, was a place where she grew her love for literature, music, theatre and the creative process. She loved the chapel experience, which she says gave her an appreciation of spirituality. For many years, Kim has been a student of Zen Buddhism and tries to live by its precepts and to meditate on a regular basis.
“Her Buddhism led her to examine her part in things and how she can bring peace to the world through her actions,” says Tara. “She’s the kind of person you would want for a neighbour, just thoughtful and giving.” Recently, Kim’s generous nature, and how it manifests in her creativity, was apparent when Tara was diagnosed with breast cancer. “She came to visit me, and we have had frequent phone contact. She gave me a beautiful handmade card for each day, and they depict the beautiful and fun things we love, like VW vans or flowers. They’re inscribed with messages of love, support and friendship. Each card also contained a bead for me to string to make a bracelet. I felt the timelessness and beauty of female friendship.” Kim is also a singer, a passion she discovered at HSC. “One day in the dining hall, one of the teachers was playing the piano and I just started belting out this song from The Pajama Game and sounded like Ethel Merman. I ended up playing the lead character, Babe, in the school production of the musical.” She’s now part of an amateur a capella choir called Sacred and Profane, whose repertoire ranges from devotional music to works by contemporary composers. These days, Kim and Barry are working on a private commission for a couple with a lakeside place on Lake Huron near Goderich. “She is originally from Nova Scotia and wants some Scotch thistles made in glass. I’ve done some prototype flowers and plan to mount them on a metal structure reminiscent of the bow of a boat. I will make it so the piece can be displayed outdoors in the summer and then mounted on a wall indoors for the winter months. And I’ll add some tiny forget-me-nots so she can be reminded of her East Coast heritage.” Another, bigger project is for a heritage site in California called Filoli, owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. ”They are renovating the kitchen garden that was originally part of the estate, and I will make a row of vegetables that light up for people who tour the gardens at night,” she says. “The veggies will emerge from the earth: a carrot, beet, Swiss chard, onion, garlic, a rutabaga and a broccoli. I might also display some of my fruit and veggie birdhouses: the Carrot Common, Banana Cabana, Lemon Drop Inn and Strawberry Preserve—naming the pieces is half the fun!” The true definition of whimsy. SPRING 2022
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