She's the female Banksy who breathes new life into derelict buildings with her colourful creations. And just like that notorious mystery graffiti artist, whose designs have turned up on back street garages and motorway underpasses, the old eyesores she targets with her talents are equally off the beaten track.
However Christina Dembinska's work doesn't involve cans of spray paint but rather stained glass windows with which she's revamped everything from rundown rural chapels to disused public loos. The only problem is that some of the locations she picks can be so remote that hardly anyone will ever get to see the fruits of her labour.
Indeed, as was the case with an old derelict shack she enhanced in a Snowdonia slate quarry, some of her efforts end up destroyed almost as soon as she puts them in place. Not that the determined 63-year-old is ever deterred from her mission.
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"The first one I ever did was in a small roofless cottage in Ceredigion which I ended up stumbling upon after staying with a friend nearby," said Christina who, despite being London-born, has family links to both Monmouth and Holyhead. "I found myself wondering about its history, who once lived there, and how it ended up in such a state."
She added that after installing the stained glass she tracked down the person who owned the cottage. "He was lovely about it and was so pleased I'd done it – it gave me the crucial motivation to carry on."
And, as she freely admits, that drive is sometimes sorely needed. "The window I did in the old slate quarry which got smashed straight away, that was a bit of a blow.
"I'd painted on it an old train and inscribed the Welsh words for 'the sound of silence' because it was so still and quiet up there. Sadly someone must have then spent an entire day throwing stones at it – it was that damaged.
"But it made me realise that once I put my art out there things are completely out of my control. Thankfully, though, at least two-thirds of my work has survived."
Take, for example, the one she made from recycled and scrap glass and donated to a Calvinist Methodist chapel in Ratgoed Valley in Powys. There neighbours even helped her erect scaffolding to reach the window.
Another resident, whose mother once played the organ there, also provided inspiration for the engraving 'Mi glywaf dyner lais', which translates as ' I hear a gentle voice.. But, while some describe her work as "a kind of magic" and "a marvellous surprise for unsuspecting passersby" does she ever worry about being stopped by the police?
"I feel safe in the knowledge that, unlike graffiti, I am replacing a part of an unused and derelict building – and, as a result, I've never been challenged," said Christina, who graduated from the University for the Creative Arts in Surrey. "As a woman in my 60s it seems I'm almost invisible doing what I do – even in broad daylight."
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