She/Her/Hers
https://www.betsyalwin.com
betsyalwin1@gmail.com
Engaged & Public Arts/Social Practice, Installation, Interdisciplinary, Sculpture
Online, Hybrid mentor (in-person and online)

BIO

Alwin’s sculptures and installations incorporate ceramic lace objects, rebar elements, wood and other materials. Her ceramic forms reflect the built environment, infrastructure and the human body. Often these forms are in conversation with other transformed elements creating precarious and playful compositions. Process plays a large part in her work. She is interested in how the transformation of materials can be a metaphor for the human condition, specifically reflecting dialectics of strength and fragility, resilience and entropy, beauty and fallibility. Alwin has been working and teaching in the Twin Cities area since 2015 after moving from Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been shown locally and nationally, including New York, Washington D.C., Massachusetts and Texas. She has completed several public sculpture commissions including works in Tokyo, Japan, Franconia Sculpture Park, Schafer, MN and Silverwood Park, St. Anthony, MN. Her work is currently represented by Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs, CA.

MENTORSHIP & TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Teaching and mentorship is the power to change individual lives. This is not something that can be quantified or predicted but is intrinsic to the health and success of an artist’s trajectory. I think about my teachers, peers and mentors who opened doors of thought, experience and perspectives. They were important touchstones in my development as an artist. As a teacher and mentor, my responsibility is to use my knowledge and experience to aid students in the development of their own styles, voices and interests. My pedagogical approach relies on relevant research, experimentation, reading and discussion that is not medium-specific but serves to develop both technical and cerebral skills that will serve as the foundation of an art career.