About
Kristina Rudnitski
9 things about me
- Love design – more art deco vs mid-century modern
- Love art – Wolf Kahn, Chagall, Monet, Lauren Harris
- Love my family – kisses to Chris, Will, Isla, Mom, Dad and Karen!
- Love trees – bought our current property because of the trees
- Do not love granola, beets or brussels sprouts. Please stop trying to convert me!
- Wish for everyone to hold hands and be happy
- Love chocolate – Truffle Treasures in Ottawa, Berthillion dark chocolate sorbet in Paris
- Also love Egon
- And Jeff Goldblum
seriously, though
I’m currently at home looking after my 2 little ones, dreaming about my urban eco tree-house, and trying to muster up the resolve to ‘do something’ about my artistic ambitions. Professionally speaking, my hope is to channel my experience in the environmental sector into the emerging field of creating accessible green residential design. I strongly feel that this is an area where Canadians can make a huge positive impact by making informed choices about how and where they live.
Prior to having my children, I worked at Environment Canada in various roles in the chemicals sector. I also worked for a private environmental informatics firm where one of our projects was developing software to visulalize trends and indicators for sustainable communities. My educational background in is the sciences: a M.Sc. in geochemistry and a B.Sc. in Environmental Science, both from the University of Guelph.
For the past two years, I have been researching green residential design and am fascinated by the range of design and technological options available. The difficulty is that there is still not a lot of information available about performance over the life cycle of such systems in our climate. Or, how best to build a passive solar family home on a small urban lot. There is scope for more research in this area and I am looking for ways to be involved.
about this site
How many times have I said that I should write a letter to the editor about this; or, wanted to tell everyone about that. Or thought, ‘wouldn’t it be so much easier to collate my research about a given topic online’… but haven’t. Now I have.
My objectives for this site are:
1) Collate info about ‘green‘ design.
This will include product reviews; musings about the ethics of various lifestyle choices; and hopefully, a directory of local green building supplies.
2) Provide a platform for indulging my alter ego as ‘artist‘.
I have this notion of growing up one day being happy at work and in life but not entirely sure how to accomplish this. For the last 3 years I’ve been at home with my babies. I’ve cherished this time. I also resolved to take this time off officially sanctioned ‘work’ (laugh out loud everyone because it’s without a doubt the hardest I have worked in my life) to delve into my creative side. Specifically, oil painting.
Ten? years ago I drifted into stained glass as a respite from graduate studies. Loved that too – the stained glass; the graduate studies not quite as passionately. The advent of children side-lined playing with sharp things and lead fumes so I decided to try painting. Something so enchanting about oil painting. Not wanting to deal with the fumes of turpentine, I was pleased to come across water miscible paints. It’s been a couple years of dabbling, and a couple course at the Ottawa School of Art and I am slowing feeling comfortable enough to start trying to show some of my pieces. I’ll let you know what transpires…
Feel free to add your comments to the site, or to drop me a line at kris@rudnitski.ca.