Alicia Forestall-Boehm

    Earlier this year I was contacted by Kelley Baum, a teacher at Franklin Fine Arts school in Chicago with a request that I participate in the school's annual Arts Day.  I was happy to have been asked and eager to participate in this annual event.  Every year artists from all areas of the arts are invited to spend the day with the student body.  This year artists included dance companies, authors, theater companies, visual artists, actors and musicians.    I have some experience with teaching art in the classroom.  During the 2005-2006 academic year, I designed and implemented a weekly comprehensive art education curriculum for a Montessori class of children ages 6-9.   This curriculum amounted to a hands-on trip through art history.  The challenge was to create weekly projects that not only followed the history of art but were engaging and workable with the ages included in the classroom.  We began with one of the earliest examples of art, cave paintings.  Working wi

Well summer has taken it's time getting to Chicago but it is finally here!  The cool rainy weather has kept me indoors and in the studio creating work.  I am happy that many of these new pieces have been included in area exhibitions.  Staci Boris, Chief Curator for the Elmhurst Art Museum juried two of my sculptures, Vertical Lines and Considering Mies , into the Summer Show at Water Street Studios in Batavia. I am thrilled to learn that I was chosen as an Honorable Mention artist in this show. The show was beautifully curated.  I was particularly pleased to see Vertical Lines hung out in the open.  Given the small size of my studio this piece was never afforded the space that gives it it's sense of floating.    The Water Street Studios Gallery Summer Show runs July 12-Aug 24, 2013 http://www.waterstreetstudios.com/   Vertical Lines  The name of this sculpture, Vertical Lines , was influenced by the artist Robert Mangold.  He is known for translating basi

Coming Together 9x12x13 encaustic, fiber, wire I do not like the cold. I know that many people are eager for the start of winter. They are happy to embrace the snow and the cold and all things winter. Now don't get me wrong, I am not immune to the beauty of newly fallen snow and the wondrous vision of the world enveloped in a white veil during a snowstorm but I prefer to experience this while tucked away in my home without any need to head out into all of this splendor. Needless to say, I am one of the many people that are eager for the start of spring. I love spring. Nature comes to life, replacing the dull colorless landscape with polished green and lovely flecks of color. One of my favorite signs of spring includes the return of boats to our harbors. While sailing along Lake Michigan this early in the year would undoubtedly be chilly to say the least, this action speaks to the optimistic expectation of warmer days to come.     It is with great expectation that I look t