Kirsten Engstrom, Sculptor

The Chadwick Bay Alliance announces the first of a series of Art Installations on Dunkirk's Central Avenue. Sculpture by artist and Mayville resident Kirsten Engstrom is currently on display in the windows of 320 Central Avenue.

Ms. Engstrom is a sculptor, massage therapist and teacher born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1944. She received her B.A. in English Literature and Mathematics in 1969 and her M.A. in Art in 1972 and L.M.T. in 1996.

Seeking to broaden her education, Ms. Engstrom went abroad in 1976. The Spanish spirit, unspoiled countryside and villages of an island off the coast of Spain - Mallorca - captured her attention, and she stayed for 20 years.

She was director of “Es Retall” an art gallery and school in Palma de Mallorca, Spain from 1979 to 1982. Ms. Engstrom also developed art programs in cultural centers throughout Mallorca.

She has exhibited extensively abroad, in Mallorca and Barcelona and stateside in New York, Florida, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Ms. Enstrom returned to live in the United States in 1995 and is now doing monumental outdoor sculptures in addition to her other work. She has taught art at the elementary, secondary and university levels nationwide.

Whether it is running an art gallery, teaching or creating her own sculptures in clay and reinforced concrete, she involves herself so completely in the activity that she is never certain if she has created ìitî or ìitî is the process of creating or changing her. Both are probably true. There is a back-to-earth heroic beauty in her work that has become her trademark.

Since 2000 she spends part of every year teaching in Hawaii. She spends the rest of the year building sculptures, exhibiting and teaching in New York and Florida. She loves to involve the community when she constructs a monumental piece, inviting school children and adults to observe the process, comment and participate in the creation.