About me.

Born on Valentines Day, 1994, Kaelin Palcu is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose life has been shaped by an unrelenting curiosity and obsession for sculpting and drawing. Her practice is grounded in a deep academic rigor—what she describes as “the bones of the medium”—but it is animated by something deeply personal: the desire to understand and to learn as much as she can.

Kaelin’s teaching philosophy is built on the same principles that shape her studio practice: technical integrity, intellectual inquiry, and creative expansion. “The act of making,” she says, “is like a visual dialogue with your own mind. You can see your own state, the processes of your own mind imbedded your medium”

That pursuit of understanding began early. Trained as a classical pianist and jazz vocalist, Kaelin’s first apprenticeship was at sixteen with Squamish Nation carver Xwalacktun Harry, who instilled in her the potential of storytelling through material—and the ethical responsibility of doing it well. From there, she studied contemporary sculpture and design at OCAD University in Toronto before falling in love with bronze and figurative sculpture. She committed herself completely, undertaking a four-year bronze-casting and gold-smithing apprenticeship before refining her sculptural training under Robert Bodem at the Florence Academy of Art.

Her path has taken her from building monuments for Parks Canada, to teaching figurative sculpture in Barcelona, to completing her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2024, where she further developed a contemporary dimension of her work. Throughout, her focus has remained steady: to understand her medium as deeply as possible—and to share what she’s learned.

As a teacher, Kaelin creates an environment of care and rigor—helping students cultivate technical skill, and creative agency. She now divides her time between New York City, her studio in Austin, TX, and British Columbia, CA, where she teaches and prepares for her up-coming exhibitions.