By capturing and preserving nature’s fleeting beauty with metal, Christine Galvez has created a whimsical world filled with reflections, creatures, myths and nostalgic beauty.  Through her transformative touch, cold metal comes alive. Intriguing and inviting, each piece tells a story and captures a moment. Her work brings light to the images and creates an experience.

 

Christine Galvez’ story started with a spark while watching her father tinkering and welding in his workshop in the south of France.  Those sparks inspired a young girl to try her hand at metalwork and years later to join the Art Students League in NY where she has created a personal art universe filled with metal and light. From her youth in a seaside town in the South of France to her vibrant NY City life today, themes have emerged: sunlight, natural forms, invented creatures and structural urban shapes; and become companions on the artist’s journey through the hammering heat and fire that shapes her world.

 

These themes emerge in the “Curiosity Cabinet” collection; where each work features a different species and shares a different emotional element. Under Pressure, her most personal piece to date, fully captures the complex balance of beauty, danger, perseverance and oppression.  Carefully integrating metal and glass, the piece tells the complex story of a curious octopus and an innocent shrimp - captured in time and preserved under glass.  Awarded the Red Dot Award at The 2019 Art Students League of NY student concours, Under Pressure put Christine in the company of Georgia O’Keefe, another Red Dot winner and inspired the artist to explore new frontiers.

 

In 2020 Christine moved her atelier to Brooklyn.  Setting up shop in Makerspace NYC she not only expanded her workspace and toolset but also her vision.  In this new space Christine is able to integrate an urban inspiration along with up-cycled materials, into her work.  She now forges new life into reclaimed automobile parts, scrap metal or regular steel and continues her metallic journey – bringing new light to luminaries and form and function to furniture.   

 

In 2021, she was awarded a City Artists Corp Grant from the NY Foundation for the Arts and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.  The recent public recognition for her work has strengthened Christine’s resolve to craft more functional pieces.  Her collection of iconic water tanks is an ornamental homage to the city she now calls home.  These tanks can serve as lighting or decorative pieces, often doubling as a place to hide cherished secrets or mementos.  Her larger, sculptural pieces expand beyond table lamps to full, often wall-sized, installations bridging the urban and natural settings.  

 

Christine’s body of work travels from the naturalist world of sculpture and art into the world of design and function.  In the artisan tradition, her work covers three main areas: sculpture, luminary, and furniture. The brand Metalight New York was developed as a vehicle to showcase her complete body of work and make it more accessible.