Design

Betsy Casañas was born and raised in North Philadelphia. She is a single parent of two beautiful children Kristianni, 6 and Archangel, 10. She studied art at Moore College of Art and Design where she received her Bachelors in Fine Arts. Betsy has worked as an artist in the latino community since 1994. At 19 she began to teach at Taller Puertorriqueño and since then has led extensive workshops in various mediums at many cultural organizations, schools, centers, libraries and churches such as The Village of Arts and Humanities, Moore College of Art and Design, The Thomas Eakins House, The Kensington Branch Library, NetworkArts Philadelphia and The Philadelphia Community Academy.

Casañas has assisted and designed over 25 public murals and mosaics since 1995 in various neighborhoods all over Philadelphia, Elkins Park, Chester, Manayunk, Camden and Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In 2004 Casañas painted and designed a mural that was installed in Northern Ireland, the project was a collaboration between students from C.H.A.D and teens from the Larne, Ireland W.M.C.A. Presently Betsy is a muralist for the Philadelphia Mural arts and is the 11th grade drawing and painting teacher at C.H.A.D. Casañas also works with an interdisciplinary group of latina artists "Las Gallas" who lead workshops in their respective disciplines for one another which has culminated in multi-disciplinary performance exhibits. Las Gallas have performed in many venues in Philadelphia and New York including the Nuyorican Poets Café and in Kansas City for the National Association for Latinos in Art and Culture Conference. Betsy's work has been exhibited in several solo shows in Devon Pa. Philadelphia and Delaware and in various group shows in Philadelphia and New York, part of a permanent collection of The Northeastern Division of the Mc Donalds Corp and in private collections in Philly, New Jersey, California and Belfast, Ireland.