What Alamaiya Rosa Made This Year

Life as a self-employed artist is like a river—full of twists and turns. And like the river, sometimes you have to let life take you along for the ride. Glass artist and student Alamaiya Rosa knows this well. She lives in the small, riverside city of Whitehorse, where she's going with the flow and stepping outside of her comfort zone. As a young artist, she's exploring multiple career pathways to find what works for her, experiencing personal growth along the way.

“We're not put on this earth to just do one thing,” Alamaiya says, “especially if we have the mind and the capacity to do all of these different things, I think we should definitely pursue them.”

Born and raised in Calgary, Alamaiya spent much of her high school years in the art classroom. Seeing her passion, her teacher encouraged her to apply to the Alberta University of the Arts, where she'd be able to push herself creatively.

While Alamaiya was there, a glass artist from the Yukon came to speak to the students about her studio. “Watching her talk so passionately about the students that would be coming up to Whitehorse to learn, I was immediately inspired to pursue an internship opportunity,” says the young artist.

Alamaiya now teaches glass-blowing at that same studio in Whitehorse. She also works at a cafe and continues her studies at Yukon University. This multi-faceted lifestyle isn't unusual for contemporary artists and young creators, who often do many things at once.

Living in the North, by the Yukon River, is very different from being in Calgary. “Seeing the lakes and all the mountains—it's absolutely gorgeous,” says Alamaiya. “Growing up in the city, you don't get to see that very much, but here, it's so close, and I think that's what I wanted at this point in my life.”

The inspirational backdrop is the perfect setting for Alamaiya to find her sense of self through craft and community, as you can watch in the video below. “Taking the opportunity to stay in Whitehorse and to kind of embrace the discomfort has opened up so many more doors,” she says.

Through experimentation and with the support of her mentors, Alamaiya is building confidence.

“This year, I made the choice to leave my comfort zone and to grow as an artist and as a teacher,” Alamaiya says.

One thing she's come to appreciate is how much life mirrors the glassworks she creates in the studio. Sometimes they turn out perfect and sometimes they can explode or break, she says. You don't know what the outcome will be before you get started, and failure is part of the process.

Whether Alamaiya decides to stay in Whitehorse after graduating from school is yet unknown. Right now, the young artist is content to try different things and see where the river of life takes her.