Welcome to Wonky Arts: Domestic Science.

My name is Shawna Henderson, and I live at the intersection of domestic arts and home building, where form and function collide and the logical loses itself to the beautiful.

I’ve spent most of my adult life spinning building science and good home design into functional beautiful homes, designing and consulting with people to create deep energy retrofits and net zero energy housing. I also develop online training about energy efficiency, building science, construction technology, and sustainable housing. You can read more about my professional publications if ya like.

I write blogs and scribble in journals incessantly.

I’m likely the biggest building science wonk you’ll ever meet at a garden centre.

I grow a good portion of our household’s food in my garden. I coordinate a community greenhouse coop. I buy food I can’t/don’t grow locally. I plant my garden like a work of art. I put food by, cook, dig, harvest, and think about ways to incorporate food into landscapes and what about suburban forestry?

This blog explores things that I find juicy and compelling: energy security, food security, beauty, sustainability, intersectionality of all sorts, the design process, quirky creative people and what brings them joy, quirky, creative spaces and how they bring us joy, tranquility, humanity.

Basically, Wonky Arts : Domestic Science takes the whole steaming shitpile of life and composts it into little snapshot stories, pointed questions, useful details, poetry, art and crafty-as-fuck sustainable ideas.

If anything I write or produce here inspires one other person to leap into their passion, open up their heart, follow their bliss, giggle explosively, get the hell out of Dodge, or otherwise burn bigger and brighter in their lives, then I’ve done something good in the world.

Because:

This is the joy of life
Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one
Being a force of nature
Instead of a ferverish, selfish, little clod of ailments and grievances
Complaining that the world will not devote itself
To making you happy.
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community
And as long as I live, it is my privilege
To do for it what ever I can.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die
For the harder I work, the more I live.
I rejoice in life for its own sake.
Life is no brief candle to me,
It is a sort of splendid torch
Which I’ve got a hold of for a moment.
And I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on
To future generations.

  •  George Bernard Shaw