Alina Litvinova is a curator and visual artist who works with a variety of mediums from photography and drawing to ceramics and glass. In 2025 she won a grant from Edinburgh Council and organized a glass art residency at Scot-ART during which she held workshops and taught 20+ artists who had never worked with glass before, covering techniques from engraving to stained glass. At the end of this residency, she made After the Laundry, the currently exhibited work, using glass left over from other participants.

See Alina’s work as part of our exhibition of work by emerging artists, Starter Pack, curated by gallery intern Hope Reynolds. Starter Pack is many things: it’s a grass roots opportunity for artists to begin, or expand on, their repertoire of exhibitions, to connect with other artists in Glasgow, to further their understanding of working with galleries and curators, and to gain publicity. Starter Pack runs at Six Foot from August 12th to August 26th.

Hi Alina! Can you tell us how your artistic journey started?
Since I was a child, I read a lot and wanted to be a writer. In school, my friend and I even made a comic book, where my friend was responsible for the illustrations, and I was responsible for the storytelling. And I think it was this background, when I read thousands of different stories, that helped my imagination develop, which helps me a lot as a visual artist now. 

What is your chosen medium, why do you enjoy working with it?
It’s very difficult for me to choose just one medium. When it comes to glass, I like the variety of textures and the fact that you can see the work completely differently depending on the angle and type of light. And I’ve always loved art works in which shadow plays a role, with glass it’s easy to create. But my favorite medium today is probably ceramics. Because of the endless number of ways you can experiment with it. That you don’t always know the result until you take the work out of the kiln is very interesting and makes you exited even about ordinary projects.

 What are you working on right now?
I would like to continue my series of small works on the theme of daily routine like my “After the laundry”. Right now I am in the process of ceramics “Cat asleep on a chair”.  But I am also actively preparing for a group exhibition of Abandoned Artists (I am a member of this art collective) “a match is silent, but it speaks”. Each participant of the exhibition prepares their own answer to the title. I will have a lot of ceramics and a very unusual arrangement of works, I am really looking forward to September to see how all our works will look together in one space.

How do you overcome creative blocks?
Usually I don’t have blocks, I have the opposite problem with an excess of ideas. I have a lot of energy for the interesting parts of the project, but it can be difficult to start a stage that is boring for me. But even if I procrastinate before an uninteresting stage, the main thing is to start. It doesn’t matter what and it doesn’t matter how, the main thing is to start and then the process that has already begun will be easier to continue. Whoever is reading this now – just start now, it will be easier later!

Have you recently finished your degree? What’s next for you?
Yes. After finishing art degree, I think it would be a good idea to develop the practice by participating in different art residencies. As I said, I have an  excess of ideas and I am very productive. If this is the type of residency “at the end you must give us something back for the collection, make a lot of works”, then it is very profitable to choose me, haha. I hope I will be lucky enough to get such a residency. In addition to the fact that you are finally not paying for your materials yourself, it is a great achievement that your works are part of a collection.

What does community (in the arts) mean to you?
It is important that any people, including artists, feel that they are not alone, but part of a group in which they will be understood. And that the art they create is not meaningless, be it any idea or just the artist’s satisfaction in the process of creation. Often artists have a lot of self-doubt, no one to share their thoughts and creative ideas with, and in an ideal world, artists are never competitors, but only support against common problems. Being part of an art community is not only about receiving, but also about giving back. Sharing an opportunity, a store where you can buy materials cheaper, saying what you liked about another artist’s work – it’s not that difficult, but it means so much.

Find out more about Alina’s work on Instagram. Starter Pack runs at Six Foot Gallery until Tuesday 26th August 2025.