Summary of Rachel E. Foster's Spring 2015 residency at Studio 3325
Rachel E. Foster is an artist, writer, and printmaker living in Chicago. She has an MFA from the California College of the Arts and a BFA from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, Ca; the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA; Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA; and Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL; among many others.
During her opening reception at Studio 3325, Foster presented So Much I Want to Tell You, a unique performative artist talk in which she provides images, quotes, and soundbites taken from the internet and presents them in an arbitrarily timed power point presentation. Foster gives brief and poignant descriptions of the content displayed, leading the viewers to understand her perspective as a curator of information. Neither she nor the audience knows which slide will be unveiled, leading to a joint experience of wonder.
While in residence at Studio 3325, Foster worked on screenprints from the series So Deep As A Well, a continuation on the themes from So Much I Want to Tell You. The same images cultivated for her presentations are printed with a simplistic palette and engulfed in white, isolating the images from the noise of the internet and presenting them individually as objects or moments to be pondered.
Concluding her time in the program, Grace Church hosted a lunchtime story hour and narrated print sale. Prints that she created during the residency were available for purchase while Foster explained in-depth the stories behind each image. Studio 3325 was given a framed print from the series, which is now on display at Grace Church.
