What do you get when you mix salvaged fence posts and a talented designer? Professor Kelly Foster’s art exhibit, Speak Yet Again. On a dark summer night, Foster took fence posts off the back of a truck as he had arranged to do with the company who donated their worn out wood. From there, he spent months designing, building, and assembling the art exhibit currently on display in the Barrington art gallery.
Speak Yet Again is a unique installation. It is not so much designed for you to look at, but rather to experience. Made of recycled fence posts, wooden structures have carefully been crafted to create spaces for guests to commune in. Professor Kelly Foster is an architect and designer. He explained he is constantly aware of “the physical elements of [spaces] but especially the social elements of them”.
“I am always noticing where people are in the room and how they’re interacting with others, subtle things.” Foster explained during his artist talk the night before the gallery opened. “This project to a certain extent is letting you into my brain a little bit.” To further understand this, we can turn to the instructions he wrote for how to view the gallery. Speak Yet Again is “an art installation to be inhabited conversationaly… When entering this installation, don’t gaze at the work. Instead, invite someone else to join you and focus on them instead.” Once inside, choose a space within the gallery, get comfortable, and start having a conversation. Try to observe the ways your location affects your interactions. When you are done, move to a different area and “speak yet again”, once again seeing how your environment affects your conversations in new ways.
Foster had two main inspirations for this installation. The first being fences he remembers from his grandparents’ home in Texas where he would often visit as a child. From here, he pulled inspiration for the woven wooden patterns, as well as the washes of colors used throughout.
The second main source of inspiration came from a Shakespear tragedy called King Lear. The Earl of Gloucester is one of the characters in this tragedy. He starts off wealthy, powerful, and friends with the king. But a series of awful events and betrayal unfold, eventually leaving the Earl of Gloucester blind, hopeless, and ready to take his own life. When he attempts to take his life, he asks to be taken to the edge of a cliff so he can jump off. He is guided by his son in disguise and doesn’t realize who is with him. He “jumps”, but doesn’t realize nothing actually happened because his son kept him on flat land. However, the son convinces him he did fall and survived. The son convinces him his life is more important than all the suffering he has induced with a famous and impactful line: “Thy life is a miracle. Speak yet again.” Foster used this quote as inspiration for his title, as well as the emotional ties which connected him to his work.
Professor Foster is a professor within the Adam’s School of Music & the Arts here at Gordon College. He teaches art and design classes and has a background in architecture. His gallery, Speak Yet Again is open and invites you into its experience for the duration of this quad.
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