Originally published in the Bird’s Eye

There are spaces you enter for the first time that feel, inexplicably, like you’ve always belonged in them. Kris Wellstein’s mostly finished greenhouse is one of those spaces. I walked in and immediately had an imaginary martini in hand, a good book, and the sound of rain on glass overhead. Then it became a cocktail party. Then I remembered I was standing in a greenhouse and that the garden part is probably the main point — though I maintain the party potential is significant.

Welcome to the sixth instalment of our Creator Spotlight Series, where we celebrate the artists, makers, and builders whose work shapes life on this island. This month we’re looking at something a little different — the art in building, and the magic that happens when the right person gets handed a vision, a scrim pile, and total creative freedom.

That vision belongs to Kris. She has been collecting things for years, not always knowing what they’d become, but knowing they’d go somewhere. Not quite an order pile, Midge says. She has a word for it: her scrim pile. It turned out to contain almost every- thing the build would need. Wharf planks. Salvaged glass. Secondhand windows. Rocks hauled by hand from the property and the roadside over nearly two years. Almost nothing was bought new. Kris knew what she wanted. What she needed was someone who could take a pile of salvaged everything and turn it into something.

Enter Midge Salter. Sparktologist — a decade of electrical work, no formal ticket, all the knowledge. Builder of many things. “I’m a snail,” he says. “I just bring my house wherever I go.” It’s a particular kind of freedom, the kind that comes from having skills that travel and the willingness to follow them. To go where the work is interesting, figure it out when you get there, and your house comes with you.

Ask Midge about building and he’ll tell you everything is math. His job is math. And the thing about math — do it right and it stops looking like math entirely. The perfect equation for a thing ends up looking beautiful. Curves and circles, nothing rigid, everything working out exactly as it should. Almost like it was always meant to be. That’s where the art lives for him — not in spite of the precision but because of it. He holds himself to a standard most people wouldn’t bother with.

A mentor’s voice lives permanently in his head — a carpenter whose bar is so high that Midge still goes back to work alongside him occasionally, just to make sure his own standards haven’t imperceptibly slipped. Not because the work isn’t good. Because good isn’t the point. Code is the floor, not the ceiling. Everything above that is where craft becomes something worth looking at.

Which brings us back to the greenhouse. Kris came to Midge with a drawing and a dream — glass faced, half sunk into the hillside, built from Kris’ bounty of gathered materials. Nothing was perfectly straight.
Beach posts aren’t. Salvaged glass doesn’t forgive. Every decision led to the next one, and when something couldn’t be built the way it was imagined, Midge found another way and made it look intentional.
The ventilation alone — cool air drawn in low, warm air pushed out high — is its own small piece of engineering tucked into the angles of the thing. Total creative freedom, one condition: don’t make it ugly. An ask built directly into the way Midge operates.

The greenhouse may be built, but it isn’t finished yet. Interior panels will be painted paths still laid, baby lemon trees to procure. There’s talk of a greenhouse warming party when it’s ready — which seems appropriate for something born from a desire to create and share knowledge around food security, and built from the kind of community that shows up with salvaged glass and a scrim pile full of possibility.

As Midge and I settled in at a picnic table at Rebecca Spit, sunshine beaming, hungry raven fledglings calling out from the trees above us, I told him not to worry — this was more of a chat than an interview. He didn’t miss a beat. He’s been interviewed for a number of things, he said. When I pressed him for the list: skateboarding, filmmaking, and police reports.

Midge Salter: self-identified snail, sparktologist, builder of many
things, and a person whose math has a way of becoming beauty.
As is tradition on Quadra, he contains multitudes. If you would
like to connect with Midge to discuss a project, you can email him
at: [email protected] or give him a call at 778-823-2583.

The next Creator Spotlight will appear in our June 24 issue. If
you know a Quadra-based creator, maker, or builder whose work
deserves a closer look — or if that person is you — we’d love to
hear from you.