Alicia Forestall-Boehm

Artist Talk, Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois Last week I spoke to a group of art students at Western Illinois University.  I told them about my work, about myself and about the paths that I had taken to get to that moment.  When asked to offer up any words of advice that I might have for emerging artists, I told them to "simply get yourself out there...that you never know who would see your work and what opportunity that may bring".  I shared my story of how doing just that has led me to where I am now and to an art commission that currently covers every open surface in my art studio. In June of 2015 I received an email from Amy DeLap and Andrew Jendrzejewski of Art Space Vincennes . They were offering me a solo show at their gallery.  Now, to be perfectly honest, I had to Google Vincennes, not knowing where, exactly, it was located. Well, it turns out that Vincennes, is located in Indiana, our next door neighbor!  Founded in 1732 and home...

I am pleased to follow up my last post with this announcement that my encaustic and fiber sculpture  "Passages" received an Award of Recognition in the 70th Annual (WVE) Wabash Valley Juried Exhibition at The Swope Art Museum. Passages Juror Carter E. Foster, the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings at the Whitney Museum of American Art, wrote this statement for the exhibition program. "Surrealism is alive and well.  Whether through startling disjunctions of scale, eerie elimination of detail, strange juxtapositions or simply playful twists on observed reality, many of the artists I chose for this year's exhibition find endless richness in tinkering with the world while remaining fully part of it, without resorting to abstraction.  Some mined their psyches or that of an imagined other quite playfully and optimistically, without the darker undercurrents often common in this type of work.  On the other hand, the terror of the mind's unknown or blacker...

With much of my time spent creating new works, I have expended little energy on submitting to summer exhibitions.  The Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana has had an annual exhibition for the past 69 years.  The 70th Annual Wabash Valley Juried Exhibition includes the work of artists residing in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio. Passages This year's exhibition was jurored by Carter E. Foster, the Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  The opportunity to position my work in front of this jurors eyes was all the motivation I needed to find the time to submit to this show. Unfulfilled Dream I entered three encaustic and fiber sculptures; "Unfulfilled Dream", "Passages" and "Living Together-But-Separate Lives". The first two were chosen and included in this exhibition.  Living Together-But-Separate Lives The exhibition runs from June 28-August 23, 2014. ...