We recently connected with Arron Foster and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Arron thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
My parents were incredibly young when they started their family and more or less forced to face a lot of challenges together. While this context doesn’t work for all, fortunately for me, it worked for my parents, who drew together and maintained their vision of a thriving, happy family. Watching my parents meet these demands through hard work, care, compassion, imagination and creativity was inspiring.
Being raised in this working-class environment by parents who loved and challenged me taught me to view labor as an integration of head, hand, and heart. This upbringing, combined with a predisposition for handwork, a naturally inquisitive nature, and an inborn desire to communicate, led me to a career in the visual arts.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am an artist and educator currently living in Northeast Ohio.
I grew up in an agricultural community tucked into the foothills of South Mountain, nestled in a rustic corner of Western Maryland, which by most would be considered insular and quaint.
While my hometown offered no real connection to the worlds of art and academia, my family was highly influential and supportive by encouraging me to pursue my passions.
Finding my place in Higher Education was more of a journey. After High School, I was able to use my developing abilities in drawing and painting to earn an art school scholarship. While in undergraduate school, part of my assigned work-study duties involved teaching visual art in community outreach centers spread across Northwest Washington D.C. While these teaching experiences were far and few, I found the exchange between student and teacher inspiring, which guided me toward a career in art education.
After Undergraduate school, I spent almost a decade building a family with my wife and partner, advancing my studio practice as an artist, and honing my skills in the classroom as a High School Art Educator. Years later, I returned to academia to pursue my Master of Fine Arts degree, with an equal passion for art and teaching.
Since earning my master’s degree in 2017, I have worked with a lovely cadre of students at a handful of institutions. I consider myself fortunate to be doing what I do, surrounded by a diverse community of learners and inspiring colleagues.
As an artist, I maintain an interdisciplinary creative research practice rooted in the production of artists’ books, prints, photographs, drawings, animations and installations. Intrigued by how the physical landscape is transformed into a cognitive one and how personal and public spaces intersect in the stories we tell about them, my work centers on what geographer John K. Wright described as experiential watchfulness, which involves seeing, documenting, and discussing specific places to stimulate local awareness, activism, and care.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Certainly, my path has been distinct. As a first-generation college student, I struggled to define my relationship with academia, which put me on an unconventional path.
From my first day as an undergraduate student to my last day as a graduate student, I experienced such life hallmarks as getting married, starting a family, changing jobs, buying and selling a house, and moving across state lines alongside those standard academic benchmarks experienced by college students the world over. To say that this was often a harried existence would be an understatement.
That said, the challenges I experienced as a non-traditional student and first-generation college student helped me build a toolkit as an artist and educator.
As an artist, these experiences reinforced the importance of community, flexibility, creativity, and time management. As an educator, they made me aware of the intense social and political barriers many of our students confront, which has helped me mentor those facing similar challenges.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
As a person who fundamentally loves what I do, I find it difficult to choose a single “most rewarding” aspect. That being said, something that stands out to me, is the professions continual focus on problem solving. Each day presents a new set of challenges, which require you to be reflective and take controlled, calculated, and thoughtful risks in order to move your studio practice forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://arron-foster.squarespace.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arron_foster_studio/?hl=en