Artist Arron Levi Foster

Arron Foster received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Art Education from East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, and his Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Book Arts from the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

His prints, artist books, and installations have been in notable exhibitions at respected national and international galleries, museums, and art centers. He has mounted solo exhibitions at Waterloo Arts, Cleveland, Ohio, George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon, The Dayton Society of the Arts in Dayton, Ohio, The Akron Soul Train Gallery in Akron, Ohio, and Hiram University in Hiram, Ohio.

He has also participated in the International Youth Printmaking Invitational Exhibition in Changsha, China, and the 11th Douro Biennial in Douro, Portugal. Foster has received competitive grants from the Ohio Arts Council, Kent State University, the University of Georgia, and the Southern Graphics Council International. Foster is an Assistant Professor of Art at Kent State University at Stark in North Canton, Ohio

"As an artist, I maintain an interdisciplinary creative research practice rooted in the production of artists’ books, prints, photographs, drawings, animations and installations. Intrigued by how the physical landscape is transformed into a cognitive one and how personal and public spaces intersect in the stories we tell about them, my work centers on what geographer John K. Wright described as experiential watchfulness, which involves seeing, documenting, and discussing specific places to stimulate local awareness, activism, and care. I habitually mine both media and process for concept and form and consider how the tools and techniques of my discipline can add to or mediate the meaning of my work. By exploring an expanded definition of print media, which intentionally questions the intersections between print, film, photography, and digital media, I strive to create works of art that center hybridity, underscore the inherent tension between image and object and confront the histories inherent to both printmaking and photography."

Tell us a little about yourself (where you are from) and your background in the arts.

I am an artist and educator currently living in Northeast Ohio. I grew up in an agricultural community tucked into the foothills of South Mountain, nestled in a rustic corner of Appalachian Western Maryland, which by most would be considered insular and quaint. While my hometown offered no real connection to the worlds of art and academia, my family was highly influential and supportive by encouraging me to pursue my passions.

Finding my place in the arts was more of a journey. After High School, I was able to use my developing abilities in drawing and painting to earn an art school scholarship. While in undergraduate school, part of my assigned work-study duties involved teaching visual art in community outreach centers spread across Northwest Washington D.C. While these teaching experiences were far and few, I found the exchange between student and teacher inspiring, which guided me toward a career in art education.

After Undergraduate school, I spent almost a decade building a family with my wife and partner, advancing my studio practice as an artist, and honing my skills in the classroom as a High School Art Educator. Years later, I returned to academia to pursue my Master of Fine Arts degree, with an equal passion for art and teaching. Since earning my master’s degree in 2017, I have worked with a lovely cadre of students at a handful of institutions. I consider myself fortunate to be doing what I do, surrounded by a diverse community of learners and inspiring colleagues.

What kind of work are you currently making?

For several years, my work as an artist has centered on exploring our collective sense of place and the distinctive or unique character of particular localities and regions. I am particularly fascinated by how our social, historical, or cultural context shapes our perception of place and our lived experience.

This work develops through on-site visits, trips to libraries and archives, and conversations with people within individual communities. This informal research generates a body of ephemera that includes drawings, prints, and photographs, all of which help me better understand, describe, and reflect a locality's physical and social realities.

While my work often centers on investigating specific places, which I hope are accessible to my viewers, my primary goal is to encourage people to notice their spaces with an eye toward criticality and to see their environment as more than just a backdrop in their lives. As such, I am often less interested in whether a person understands my exact references and more interested in creating an experience that engages the viewer's senses, provokes feelings, and encourages self-reflection regarding their relationship with the living world.

Currently my work focuses on creatively documenting and interpreting superfund and brownfield sites found in Northeast Ohio. At its core, the work centers the cultivation of a meaningful relationship to place through direct engagement with local environs. Much of this work was made in situ as a response to the timeless cycles of devastation and recovery that occur throughout Northeast Ohio’s postindustrial landscape. Through the act of close looking and the experience of capturing a piece of the landscape in perpetuity through printmaking, photography and installation, I have attempted to engage with the unique qualities of the Ohio landscape while creating images that illustrate the overarching phenomena of ecological balance that characterizes nature.

What is a day like in the studio for you?

To be honest, I find it really hard to turn-off. In general, I prescribe to the notion that everything is the studio. So regardless of whether I am physically in my studio or not, I am always thinking, planning, daydreaming, strategizing or working. That being said, I like to see my studio as a lab or workshop. It’s a place for me to experiment and make mistakes. Yes, there are those times, when I am in production mode and working with a clear head toward a deadline, but more often than not I am tinkering on a handful of projects and looking for new ideas.

What are you looking at right now and/or reading?

For the past several years, I’d been reading, or re-reading non-fiction titles focused primarily on history, culture and politics. Examples would include a re-read of Howard Zinn’s, A Peoples History of the United States or Farrah Stockman’s book American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears.

Lately though, I’ve been really enjoying free-form, modernist and experimental Poetry, with examples including T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land and Ohio Native J.I.B’s. Our Tiny Little Lives.

Where can we find more of your work? (ex. website/insta/gallery/upcoming shows)

Website: https://arron-foster.squarespace.com

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/arron_foster_studio/