bio & resume
Beth Galston is known for creating immersive environments, sculptures, prints, and public art commissions that combine nature, technology and light. Her installations define space through the layering of materials—both ephemeral and physical. By collecting, reproducing, and re-presenting organic elements in her sculptures and her prints she creates forms which echo and amplify the cycles of the natural world.
Galston earned the SMVisS degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) for five years. She studied with sculptor Dale Eldred, earning the BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute, and BA from Cornell University. Galston has exhibited and created public art commissions throughout the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2013 Massachusetts Artists Fellowship in Sculpture/Installation, a two-year Bunting Institute Fellowship at Radcliffe, a National Endowment for the Arts InterArts award, a MacDowell Fellowship, a Yaddo Residency, and a funded Residency at Sculpture Space, Inc.
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alchemy
One of the earliest art experiences I remember (although I didn’t identify it as art at the time) was a visit with my father, a biologist, at his laboratory. I was probably eight years old. To keep me occupied, he set up a series of glass flasks with colored chemicals in them. I spent the day mixing colors by pouring the liquids from one flask to the next, and viewing the changing luminous colors through the transparent glass containers. I vividly remember the magic of this moment and how fascinated I was to be immersed in a world of light, color, transparency and motion. In each of my installations I try to capture this sense of magic and enchantment; to create a place that invites viewers in and leads them on a journey, delighting the senses and provoking the imagination.
process
Twenty years ago, when preparing for an exhibition, I became fascinated with a large magnolia tree that had dropped its leaves in an abundant pile on the ground outside the gallery. Their beautiful shapes reflected the yearly cycle of growth and decay. I began collecting the leaves, bringing them indoors and laying them out on the floor of my studio, rescuing them from this natural process—in effect, stopping time. By collecting, preserving, and transforming them in various ways, I gave them new sculptural life. The phrase Recasting Nature refers to my process of casting using urethane resin, a translucent plastic. I embed natural materials within blocks of resin, like insects in amber, or transform their shapes into crystalline objects. I cast chains of acorn caps in bronze to make them permanent. “Recasting” also means, "to cast again or anew,” and in the process, something familiar such as an acorn or rose stem is transformed into something new.
Using the elements and principles found in nature my ideas likewise cycle and re-emerge in new forms and materials. My hope is to provide viewers with an experience that will allow them to see the world with fresh eyes.
photos: Beth Galston, above, collecting on the beach as a child; left, in front of her sculpture, Ice Forest, in 2016