Though now rooted deeply in North Carolina, I grew up in New Jersey and went to college in Boston (pictured is Sedona for no relevant reason). I received my MA in expressive arts therapy and mental health counseling from Lesley University, and this background continues to shape how I approach making. I value art as an accessible force for connection, healing, and transformation. I see art making as a human experience that benefits individuals and communities physically, mentally, relationally - and even existentially. It might just save us from the assorted horrors.
I prefer to work freely across media because it’s the most satisfying way of doing things for my neurodivergent brain and because I love art materials (fun fact: pretty much everything can be an art material). I have worked with clay for over a decade, focusing on wheel throwing, sculpture, and alternative firing. For the past couple of years I’ve obsessively made cyanotypes and experimented with encaustic and assemblage.
I’m really interested in exploring the relationships between nature, material, and chance. Unpredictability, variation, and subtle shifts are always collaborators. Much of my work is informed by attentive, embodied ways of moving through this world — exploring the forests of Boone or the beaches of Topsail, collecting ephemera, and lingering with small, often overlooked details. I guarantee you I’m the slowest on the hiking trail, mostly because I’m actually meandering in the wilderness of dense forest looking under decaying logs for slime molds (fascinating, I promise you) or lost in thought staring at light on a spiderweb.
Each piece of art that I make and share feels to me like an offering, a penguin pebble - it’s me emerging from the path in the woods, disproportionately excited, saying ‘Look at that!’ … and we do. To a very busy mind in a very busy world, paying attention together can feel like the most human and loving thing there is. Thank you for pausing to look with me.
Artist Statement
Artist bio
Alysa Cantor now lives in Chapel Hill, NC after spending five years in the mountains of Boone. Living in the forest alongside the New River instilled a profound sense of place and a relentless curiosity about the landscape around her and its history. The mushrooms, lichen, flora, birds, insects and rocks that populated her world became her language for exploring that liminal space between our inner and outer landscapes.
Alysa is drawn to varied media that reward both presence and play. She works primarily with clay, printmaking and encaustic to create both two-dimensional artwork and sculpture. Her studio is in a warehouse space at Liberty Arts in Durham, where she enjoys working alongside metal, glass and fiber artists.
Alysa Cantor’s work has been shown in regional exhibitions, including a recent solo show in Durham, ‘Summer in Bloom’ and Hummingbird Hall Gallery, and the upcoming North Carolina Artists Exhibition. She has participated in many local events and festivals, such as Liberty Arts' Iron Pour, Cary’s Spring Daze, The NC Folk Festival, and Boone’s Boonerang. She twice participated in the summer artist residency at historic Edgewood Cottage in Blowing Rock, NC. Additionally, digital print reproductions of her original cyanotypes can be found at the Curate boutique in Raleigh.