Sylvie doesn’t remember when she was first introduced to clay because it was around her from birth – her grandmother had her pottery studio on the ground floor of their house in Bel Air, Seychelles. When she wasn’t at school, she spent time most days of her childhood in the studio with her. According to Sylvie, her grandmother “was the most amazing and encouraging teacher and allowed me to learn to create without boundaries thereby making my own mistakes by pushing the boundaries of different media.  Since then, I have not stopped feeding the creative spark that she lit in me.”     

Having moved to the US and as an adult, Sylvie transitioned from one three-dimensional medium to the next.  As a young adult, she created wax sculptures and during her undergraduate years she undertook stone sculpture.  She then moved on to glass mosaics, wirework, beading, polymer clay sculpture and anything else she could get her hands on.  Once in Guam, she started teaching art lessons as well as still creating her own work.  Her love for clay resurfaced while she was doing her Master of Arts in Art degree at the University of Guam under the mentorship of Professor Lewis Rifkowitz. She was also blessed enough to work there as an adjunct professor teaching sculpture and ceramics. 

As a three-dimensional artist, she specializes in sculpture and ceramics whereby her artwork is biomorphic in style and sensual in movement. Originally from Seychelles, but currently living in Guam, she has always been greatly inspired by the sea and all of its inhabitants, as well as the rest of her natural surroundings. When working with clay, most of her work is created solely with her bare hands as she believes in letting her direct sense of touch guide her sculptural work. Her hands inevitably create what she loves – memories of a childhood paradise, sea life, and the ever-swaying movement of life forces such as the waves and winds. 

Sylvie’s artwork has recently been showcased in Women United Art Magazine, Art Fluent, Teravarna, Light Space and Time, and the Isla Center For the Arts and can be purchased at Eden Art Space, Saatchi Art, and Artwork Archive. Her sculptures have found homes in the US, UK, Seychelles, Australia, and India 

Santa Rita, Guam, USA ❖ www.SylvieAlvarez.com ❖@SylvieAlvarezArt

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Artist Statement

Touch, in my opinion, is the most underrated and undervalued of the senses. It has the power - 

to Heal, 

to Soothe, 

to Hurt, 

to Love, 

to Create.

The way a lover's skin feels during a passionate moment. 

The way mud feels squishing through my toes. 

The way porcelain slides through my hands and fingers as I unawaredly manipulate it in the way my mind wants. 

• This is how I create.

I create through a stream of consciousness and it's very freeing because my hands just create whatever the brain is directly telling them to do. There's no pre-planning so it frees the mind from responsibility, allowing the mind to revel and enjoy the beauty of the moment. As I am eternally fascinated by the purity of form and fluidity within the seas' depths, my hands "massage" sculptures into being inspired by the creatures and oceanic movements found within. Squishing clay through my fingers... The sensuality of it is like nothing else and that is why I choose to use no other tools, apart from my hands, when I sculpt.