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...

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 ...