Alicia Forestall-Boehm

Setting up an art exhibition quite often begins by choosing a theme.  A theme can serve to tie all of the included works together.  It usually explores a particular concept or idea.     I am a member of the artists group FUSEDChicago.  For our first group show of the year, Textual Encounters at ARC Gallery in Chicago, we exhibited works that are inspired by the written word.  My textural reference was a quote from the artist Jasper Johns:  “One likes to think that one anticipates changes in the spaces we inhabit, and our ideas about space.” For this exhibit I wanted to include some of the columns from my sculpture "Spaces We Inhabit".  These 15 feet high sculptures were designed to be hung from the ceiling, enabling visitors to walk among them but I was unable to do so in this space.  So I adapted and installed 7 of the columns with this wall hanger.     "Spaces We Inhabit", ARC Gallery I have been in art exhibitions that use an art medium as

I was thrilled to have had the opportunity for my first solo exhibition this past December. My show Transformed Spaces consisted of two sculptural installations; Infinite Possibilities and The Spaces We Inhabit.  It considered the symmetry of the urban landscape and explored the physical and mental boundaries of the public and private spaces we inhabit.      Infinite Possibilities is a wall installation consisting of 30 unique wall cubes, each utilizing similar and familiar materials yet each recognizing its own distinctive space .   Spaces We Inhabit is an installation of a dozen, twelve foot high columns of encaustic and fiber sculptures created by altering 2-dimensional paintings.   This transformation acknowledges another kind of space; one of visual repetitiveness and change.    Transformed Spaces was installed in the Art on Armitage Gallery window December 1, 2015 and was up throughout the month.  I was lucky enough to have the assistance o

I often begin a new work from a sketched design.  The lower design in this image from my sketch book was the inspiration for a new sculpture.   Beginning with a circular wire support, I created a 3 dimensional version of this sketched image.  The problem was that, to me, the actual sculpture didn't please me as much as the sketched image.  So it sat in the back of my studio waiting for a creative revelation.  Then one day, as I studied this piece, I envisioned it "exploding" open, so I took an  knife to it and, leaving the circular wire armature intact, turned the single form into one that had five connecting sections.  This  alteration added interest and movement.  Hmmm, this certainly was a dramatic departure from the original sketch but it was a move in the right direction. Knowing that this piece was not finished, I returned it to it's spot in the back of my studio.  I lived with this new form, manipulating these five appendages in

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.

In my last post I talked about my preparation for the exhibit "Spaces We Inhabit" and the two sculptural installations I created for this show.  This post is a collection of images from the exhibition.      "Spaces We Inhabit" at the Hairpin Arts Center, Chicago.                 Me with my installation Spaces We Inhabit .  It consisted of 7 ceiling-hung columns, each 15' long.  The cubes themselves vary in size from 1.5"x1.5"x1.5" to 4.5"x4.5"x4.5".                                            Infinite Possibilities on the wall to the left.    The Power of Place and   Make No Little Plans on pedestals.  On the wall - two paintings by Mary Zeran between two paintings by Emily Rutledge.   Moving Day on the wall to the left, Place on the pedestal, paintings by Emily Rutledge on the wall and a peek of my installation Spaces We Inhabit between the wall and col

  Back in November of 2013, artists Mary Zeran and Emily Rutledge approached me with the idea of putting together a proposal for an exhibition of our work.   What evolved was “Spaces We Inhabit: Sculptures and Paintings by Alicia Forestall-Boehm, Emily Rutledge and Mary Zeran” at the Hairpin Arts Center in Chicago.   I was familiar with Hairpin having exhibited my encaustic and fiber Vessels in the center’s inaugural exhibition “Come Together”.      Vessel 12, Vessel 14, Vessel 20 on shelves to the right. Mary Ellen Croteau's work to the left Come Together, Hairpin Arts Center   It is a beautiful light-filled windowed space situated in a historical building in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. In my last blog post "Winter Exhibition News" I mused about turning a new wall hanging sculpture, “Place”, into a multi-piece installation.   100+ feet of cotton rope for my ceiling hung sculpture, Spaces We Inhabit   My vision of the a multi-column