Her works echo the waves of the Irish sea and the giant glaciers of Canada where she now spends much of her time.
One of her latest projects, In a Bubble, is going on display at the annual Sculpture in Context exhibition which opens in the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin on September 4.
It’s a piece that was born out an idea that Alva had during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when with funding from the Arts Council she invited people to send her photos of them blowing bubbles in their homes and gardens at a time when we were encouraged to stay in our bubbles during lockdown. From their images, she created the work out of glass and steel to “accentuate the resilience and community soul of our nation and diaspora to celebrate the unique spirit of humanity and society that we as Irish people possess.”
She is delighted that it is included in this year’s Sculpture in Context which marks the 40th anniversary of Ireland’s biggest sculpture exhibition, featuring over 90 sculptures.
“It’s one of my favourite exhibitions. It brings everyone together and I’m so happy to be back this year. It’s a unique exhibition in the way it makes you wander from corner to corner and you can get lost in it. I love it!”
A native of Killybegs, Alva was always drawn to the outdoors and the sea. She fell in love with glass while studying at NCAD, and won a scholarship award at the Pilchuck School of Glass in Seattle, USA, where she further developed her technique to create distinctive pieces that have seen her win numerous awards.
Swapping the north west of her native Donegal for Ireland’s north east, she set up studio close to the pier at Carlingford Lough on the rugged Cooley peninsula.
There she combines glass with metal to create works which mirror the moods of the sea from crashing waves to gentle ripples. The fruits of the sea, oysters and their pearls, are also a recurring motif.
Now that she spends much of the year in the Rocky Mountains, Canada, it’s the glaciers and ice fields that inspire her.
She loves the cold and ice, finding it bracing and invigorating compared to the damp cold of an Irish winter.
“I love the cold. I love it. It’s a dry cold that doesn’t get into your bones. We’re so high up in the mountains that when it rains it falls as snow.”
Winter temperatures drop to minus 20 to minus 38.
Life continues as normal at minus 20 but when it drops to minus 38 that’s when a cold warning is issued and everyone must stay inside.
She enjoys the outdoors lifestyle in Canada, which includes going for hikes with other Mums after dropping her children at school before her working day begins.
“All my work is outdoors – I tool the ice from the river using a blow torch to work it, just like ice sculptures.”
Alva always used ice in her art practice, freezing water and storing it in a chest freezing to make wax casting for her glass sculptures of the waves breaking on the shores of Carlingford Lough.
Now, once the snow and ice form, she goes out into the ice fields with a pick axe and cuts huge blocks of ice which form the basis for her pieces. She then casts the pieces of ice in wax to create her glass sculptures using a method similar to ‘lost casting’ for bronzes.
She has just been awarded a medal from the United Nations for outstanding contribution to the UN Year of Glaciers Preservation for her new sculpture Glacier installed in Canmore in the Canadian Rockies.
Cast in solid crystal and created from moulds taken directly from the shrinking ice within the Arctic circle and the glaciers in Banff National Park, chiefly the Athabasca Glacier and the Saskatchewan Glacier within the Columbia ice field, the largest ice field south of the Arctic, Alva says that the work aims at raising awareness about “ the vital role glaciers, snow and ice play in our climate system and water cycle, as well as far reaching impacts of rapid glacial melts.”
While she has her own studio at home in Carlingford, where she works closely with G&S Stainless Steel Services Ltd in Louth for the construction of her large scale Irish commissions, she is currently renting studio space in Canada.
Alva has exhibited extensively in Ireland, throughout Europe, the United States, Canada and as far away as China.
Among her many commissions in Ireland are Rise at The Sharp Building Dublin and PULSE, a new interactive public sculpture located at City Quay, Dublin Docklands, on the south bank of the River Liffey.
Her work is held in public and private collection in Ireland and abroad. She is represented by the Kildare Gallery in Ireland and the by Winston Wächter Gallery in Seattle and NYC, in the United States and Elevation Gallery, The Rockies, in Canada.