About Us | Summer Kitchen Studios, Altona, Manitoba


Norman Schmidt	Sharon Schmidt

Norman and Sharon are individuals who find great satisfaction in making things by hand using primarily fabric and paper. Having retired from professional careers, which kept them in the city most of their lives, they have returned to the rural community where they were born and raised, the place on the Canadian prairie where the wide valleys of the Red and Pembina Rivers merge into a land of dead-flat rich and heavy black soils (which attracted their farming Mennonite ancestors to settle here), a land of farms, villages and small towns.

Inspiration for their work comes from the peculiarities of place and culture – the history, the faith of the people and their traditions, together with the flora and fauna of the expansive fields, which in a long thin line join the dominating arch of sky. In this place, as at the seaside, the very near and the very far meet. This is where Norman and Sharon have established Summer Kitchen Studio and Summer Kitchen Press.

Why two names, you might wonder. For the simple reason that various types of artwork are produced at Summer Kitchen Studio, one specialty being the printing of small limited editions by hand, using letterpress. Because private printing, which was first practised by William Morris in the 1890s, has such a longstanding and unique tradition, the printed works from Summer Kitchen Studio bear their own imprint, Summer Kitchen Press.

William Morris had a practical view of art, of which he identified two kinds, art made for the mind and art for the body. But their purpose is one, he said, “it helps the healthiness of both body and soul to live among beautiful things.” And when art is genuine, he said, its practice always provides, “a happiness to both maker and user . . . and sometimes the two kinds of art are combined.” This uncomplicated philosophy applies at Summer Kitchen Studio.

Taken for granted, "healthiness of body and soul" is often kept too lightly in mind. Diagnosed recently with Meniérè's Disease, for Norman many things once taken for granted are no longer possible; one thing is desired, the reality is something else. The glorious beauty that is life casts a shadow which is soul-withering. This is life's paradox. Yet through the paradox there is something to be discovered, a greater glory we are all a part of. In nature and in art we have a glimmer of something deeper, something signifying a fuller beauty, because grace given shows the possibility of ugliness and pain being redeemed. Here art finds its true locus, and it is eminently practical for body and soul.

Summer Kitchen Studio originally began in an old summer kitchen. This small outbuilding was an important feature on most Mennonite homesteads, used only in the summer time for cooking, baking, and canning so that the main house would not become overheated by these activities. Sometimes it was attached to the main dwelling. The present studio you see here is inspired by such a building.