August 2024
Pam O’Leary
For this month, Winnipeg River Arts Council features Pam O’Leary, an artist who works with standard glass, stained glass, and fused glass. She grew up in Winnipeg, and completed her education and university there. In her late twenties, she and her husband moved to Churchill and ran “Adventure Walking Tours/Nature First Tours.” On their guided tours, they provided many happy tourists with great memories of birds, flowers, and polar bears in the raw subarctic environment. When COVID shut down this business, they decided to stop fulltime work and head south.
O’Leary’s family has a long history with the Eastman area. Her grandfather helped build the Seven Sisters power plant, her mother was born and raised there, and she spent her younger years roaming the area. When O’Leary’s grandfather retired, they purchased land on the Whitemouth River and moved the old farm house onto the property.
She said, “I spent every spare minute at the family cottage. Fifteen years ago, my husband and I built a house beside the cottage, and lived there for six months of the year until retiring and living here full time.”
In 1978, O’Leary took a course at Red River with Ernest Ashcroft, a master in stained glass. After this introduction to glass art, she invested in every book on this topic she could get her hands on, started hanging out at Prairie Stained Glass, and never looked back. Her husband bought her a small kiln and had it shipped to Churchill. As well, she took many courses for bead-making and fusing.
She said, “I can’t look at a garden, or scenery, or really anything that captures my fancy, without wanting to recreate it in glass. The challenge is in the mechanics and science behind making it work. The joy is in the combination of colours, the play of the light, the sheer beauty of it.”
When asked about exhibiting her work, O’Leary said, “I entered three pieces in WRAC’s Eastman Judged Art Exhibition. This was my first experience being judged. I didn’t win any awards, but I got some really good information from the judges.
When asked about marketing her work, O’Leary admitted at first she gave away everything she made as gifts – if it wasn’t decorating their house. She tried a few markets in Churchill but didn’t really have time to do it. When she retired, she got a bigger kiln and turned the family cabin into her shop. She named it “Clara’s Cottage” in memory of Clara, her grandmother.
She likes to try everything and the shelves started to fill up, so her husband suggested she sell some pieces to make money to buy more glass. This remark motivated O’Leary and her painter friend, Ingrid Butenschou, to open “Clara’s Cottage Art & Glass Gift Shop.”
O’Leary said, “Ingrid is an amazing painter, and now we have art, and glass for sale. I haven’t done any instruction except for friends, one on one. My shop is so stuffed full there would be no surface space for more than two of us.”
Clara’s Cottage is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. until October. Both artists recently participated in the Pinawa Market. On August 15, they will be selling their art at the Lac Du Bonnet Night Market, and, on August 17 and 18, their work will be showcased in the Boreal Shores Art Tour.
O’Leary can’t help but rave about the beauty of her medium. She said, “Glass is my passion, my happy place. Everyone should have something like that in their lives. From a single leaf to the whole forest, in every light possible. Rain clouds, sunsets, summer gardens, winter landscapes, flowers, dragons, horses. So much incredible glass, so little time.”
