My grandmother worked at the Bank of Montreal at Main and Hastings and started bringing me to Gastown when I was a year old. I was here every week for something or other until I started working full time at the police station when I was 17. I feel like home when I’m here. People don’t understand it, my kids say ‘mom, you live in hell’ but for me it’s about being able to walk out on the street and have a conversation. I think my strength is in my ideas. Sometimes art-wise, people get interested and there’s a kind of a buzz. I used the grant to work with acrylic, oil, photography and film to produce a series of mixed media works entitled ‘The View From My Window. The work has evolved into an expansion and exploration of the concept that Gastowns strength lies in the fact that ‘Everybody is Here’. And the underlying question - Do we really mean that?
