NAME: Catherine Wanek

HOME: Kingston, New Mexico

PROFESSION: Photographer, author, tireless sustainable building advocate

RECENT ACHIEVEMENT: Spent a year traveling the United States and Canada taking pictures and writing profiles of straw bale houses for a coffee table book, The New Strawbale Home (Gibbs Smith, 2003), which features 150 color photos of 40 environmentally conscious houses.

VITAE: Founding member of Builders Without Borders (see “Building Global Villages,” page 22). Owner/operator of Natural Building Resources, a mail-order source for books and videos on sustainable construction (strawbalecentral.com). Video producer of the Building With Straw series and The Straw Bale Solution. Former editor of The Last Straw: International Journal of Straw Bale and Natural Building. Co-editor of a book of collected essays, The Art of Natural Building (New Society Press, 2002).

BALE-TOTING EXPERIENCE: If she’s not framing straw structures in her Nikon lens, Wanek likes to frame up straw bale houses. She’s helped build a wheelchair-accessible summer home for her parents and a straw addition to the family-owned Black Range Lodge.

WHY SHE DOES IT: “I put my energies into natural building because it makes a difference for my neighbors and the entire planet. My photos in The New Strawbale Home prove that when you create a sustainable home, you don’t have to compromise on aesthetics or comfort.”