STUDIO VISIT, MARCH, 2024
Erin Fostel grew up in Baltimore and attended Maryland Institute College of Art. But In 2014, grief altered her relationship with Baltimore, heightening her awareness of what it means to exist in a static location while processing mortality. Today she still calls the city her home and has used her artwork as a way to understand her complex relationship with Baltimore. Her graphite and charcoal works are intimate and delicate, inviting viewers to examine them closely, linger, and reflect, much like she was does outside of the studio. Baltimore has warmly embraced Erin, and her artwork serves as a testament to the emotional journey one can undergo within a specific location. Mostly on bike and on foot, Erin takes photographs and engages with the city daily, noticing the moments that many neglect. Fostel’s work has recently been acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art and is also featured in the new book, City of Artists.
I had the pleasure of meeting her in her Mt. Vernon studio last month, where we discussed the trajectory of her artistic practice and her deep love for drawing.
Interview between Amy Boone-McCreesh and Erin Fostel
AMY: WHERE IS YOUR STUDIO, HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?
ERIN: My studio is in Mount Vernon in Baltimore, Maryland. I have been here since the summer of 2022. I previously had a space in my house but I needed to make that giant piece over there (the YWCA bedroom shelter drawing) and that did not fit in my home studio, because the wall and ceiling are not high enough. I was doing that piece for the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and I asked them to pay for the space, which they graciously did. I really liked leaving the house and coming to a studio and having separation from my home, especially since I’m doing this full time now. And so I just stayed.
A: WHAT IS A TYPICAL STUDIO DAY LIKE FOR YOU?
E: I usually get here around 10:30 or 11am. The majority of the time I’m biking here. It’s like a four and a half mile ride, so usually I spend the first 20 minutes decompressing. Then I just work on whatever I got going on. I tend to eat lunch not long after I get here, around 12:30 or 1. And then I have my one cup of coffee for the day, and then I work straight until like 6:00 or 6:30. And then I hop back on my bike and I go home and I relax.
A: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE BALTIMORE SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHY IN YOUR WORK?Â
E: Well I started, I guess it was 2016, doing Baltimore drawings. Prior to that time I only did figurative, narrative drawings that I composed entirely inside my studio space. And they were all pictures of me doing a variety of funny, playful things. But then in 2014, my dad died and that was really fucking sad. It greatly changed my relationship with life and it changed the kind of work that I wanted to make. So I started doing drawings of Baltimore as a way to deal with this immense sadness. My dad was an architect and so I was drawing buildings to grieve and to commemorate.
This shift was a really transformative experience for me. That set of drawings, which were very personal, were the first time I had drawn public space. I was showing them in Baltimore and I quickly realized that I was drawing buildings that other people had a connection to. They had memories there, or just really loved the architecture. I realized that we all have a very personal relationship with things that are public. Some people also told me that as they moved around the city they kept their eyes peeled for a building they could tell me draw. And that was cool to hear, that I had influenced and excited them well beyond just the few seconds or minutes they may have spent looking at a drawing.
Around this same time my physical relationship with Baltimore started to change, as I also started biking a lot more as my mode of transportation. And I was walking around the city a lot more. I became familiar in a way that one can’t be when they just use a car to get around. A lot of my imagery is still something I find while wandering around Baltimore.
A: YOUR WORK DEPICTS A LOT OF INTIMATE SPACES, CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THIS STARTED?
E: I think I reached the point where I couldn’t make the Baltimore architecture drawings anymore because it felt too much like I was still sitting in that grief and I needed to move on. When I was ready to move on, I was trying to think of what felt like a good transition from that work. Because I knew I was not going back to making the work I made before. And after having worked with such public space, I wanted to shift to an intimate space, a space that was only accessible to the person it belonged to. And at that time I had watched a friend on Instagram kind of publicly going through a divorce, just in that she was talking a lot about her feelings, what was happening in her life. And she was sharing photos of her new apartment and she posted some photos of herself at night under the moonlight in her bedroom. And I was just like, that is fucking beautiful. So I asked her if I could come draw her room, but with her not in it. And she said yes. And so I came and I photographed, and I brought photos back to my studio and I drew it and I was like, This is kind of interesting. And then I was like, I wonder if anybody else, any other woman who has a space that’s just hers, if they would be interested in me drawing their room. So I posted that drawing on social media and asked for volunteers, and I was inundated with women who wanted me to draw their bedrooms.
So I was like, okay, this is a thing that resonates! And again, it’s a really personal space, but all women relate in a very universal way to how they want their space to be. What kind of purpose that space provides. Different experiences that lead you to having a space just to yourself versus sharing it with somebody else. And so I went on to make about 40 of those drawings. And then I had reached a point where I was like, I cannot draw bedsheets anymore. I can’t draw venetian blinds anymore! I don’t want to feel annoyed with the content of it, so that means I should probably just take a break.
I was working on that series when the pandemic started. During that time I began to draw my own home. I went from totally public to another’s private space and then I came to my own. The shadow series started as I was watching the sun as it was moving through my house each day. It was captivating. Those pieces are very much a capsule of that time.
A: CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR PROCESS?
E: I primarily draw from photographs that I take with my phone. I keep a journalistic sketchbook where I occasionally sketch from life, but mostly write down lots of thoughts. Or take notes, and write quotes. I use my phone as a visual sketchbook of sorts, to document the things I am interested in drawing. I have many, many folders of pictures saved. I tweak and crop these photos right on my phone or in Photoshop on my computer. When I decide to start a drawing, I will transfer the photo to an iPad and reference that as I draw.
With the exception of the bedroom drawings, I take some artistic liberties as I work. If I love everything about the photo, I will be pretty beholden to it, but most of the time the photo is the starting point. People often think that my drawings are photographic, which is fine, but also they’re not really photographic because they’re too wobbly. To me, they’re very much a drawing. Things are sharper than they would be if you were looking at it in a photo, or if you’re looking at it with your eyes.
As an image-based artist, versus a process-based one, it feels like a lot of my process is deciding what imagery to draw next. Like what makes sense based on what I am thinking about or experiencing. And what feels like growth from what I have drawn before. I think this is why I journal a lot, trying to decipher what thoughts can percolate into imagery. I still am interested in pulling from observation (photographs of observations), and so an important part of my process involves time outside of the studio gathering source material. I just recently realized that I very much enjoy having a process that involves physical exploration (to gather) and solitude (to draw). Also, the writing and the photographing go hand in hand. Whatever I am thinking about is inevitably also what I end up photographing, even if I don’t always realize it right away.
A: HOW DID YOU FIND CHARCOAL AND GRAPHITE DRAWING TO BE THE BEST VEHICLE FOR THIS WORK?
E: I fell in love with charcoal in college and really enjoyed the act of making representational images with just this little stick of burnt wood. It feels almost bizarre to build up a surface with little abstract marks that end up an image that actually looks like something. Over the years the drawings have become tighter, especially as I use more charcoal pencils than sticks. I like making work that is accessible to a viewer and where the labor of making is understood. Everyone who looks at one of my drawings knows it took time to make, a lot of time to make. That understanding of labor adds value to the imagery. I think this can give more weight to what I draw and more consideration of what I am depicting.
A: DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING COMING UP YOU’D LIKE TO PROMOTE? OR ANY ENTERTAINMENT RECOMMENDATIONS?
E: I was just published in a wonderful book called City of Artists: Baltimore. It is a collection of writers and visual artists who are based in Baltimore. And it is now in its second printing!
This summer, there will be a show of the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore City Travel Prize winners. It’s a great prize that is awarded to a Baltimore-based artist and I won in 2018 and traveled to Japan. The group show will be at the School 33 Art Center, from June 6th to July 21st. Fellow winners included Jackie Milad, Schroeder Cherry, and JM Giordano, who are all also in the book.
I primarily listen to podcasts and books when I’m drawing. Right now, my favorite podcasts are Lemme Fix It! and Adulting. They’re both hosted by really hilarious people who are good friends. So it’s like you’re listening to these best friends just talk about interesting and informative things for like an hour. And they’re laughing and they’re enjoying each other’s company and it just feels really good to just listen to. Book wise, I’m about to start listening to the last of Louise Penny’s books about Inspector Gamache. They’re so good. I love murder mysteries. I inherited that from my mom. Very addicting. Wholesome ones, though, if a murder mystery can be wholesome! Like a murder happened and that’s terrible but there is no graphic violence and people bond.
