BmoreArt

“Shadow Series” is featured in Time of Day, Place in Life, Fostel’s solo show at C. Grimaldis Gallery, up through May 28. Each piece is drawn at direct scale—in other words, the size of a hinge is the size of a hinge. Many of the drawings are large too and command the front room in which they hang. 

In the back room of the gallery hangs another set of drawings: 18 charcoal renderings of individual women’s bedrooms (appropriately titled “Bedroom Series”). These pieces are smaller, generally running around 11 x 15 inches, and the scenes appear cluttered with intimate detail. 

The impact of the bedroom drawings lies primarily in their technical skill. Fostel makes it easy to admire the way she illustrates the slight wrinkle of a blanket in “An attic to call home,” or the soft light streaming through in “Pusheen dreams.” The images stop just short of photorealism, maintaining a soft dream-like quality even when the lines remain sharp. 

Fostel keeps her subjects anonymous, but their choices in decoration and furniture communicate elements of their personalities. I wonder about the woman whose bedroom is depicted in “After 45 years,” who sleeps in a traditional wooden four-poster bed. I wonder what she has in common with the person outlined in “Judith watches over,” who has a reproduction of the famous Judith Slaying Holofernes painting hanging above her nightstand. The series maintains a voyeur quality, as the audience peers into a stranger’s private space. 

As in “Shadow Series,” Fostel likes to suggest what lies beyond the limits of each scene rather than depict it outright. We see the tangled sheets of an unmade bed in “Resting between an ox and a feline,” but not the person who slept in it the night before. An open book in “The advantages of being a woman artist,” but not the woman who was reading it. 

An invisible boundary seems to exist around these spaces, as if Fostel wants to make sure her subjects are kept safe. As viewers, we are allowed a glimpse, but we’re not exactly invited to come sit on the bed. “Shadow Series,” meanwhile, places the viewer firmly inside the scene (an effect which is no doubt aided by the direct scale). We are left to sort through what is “real”—that is, what are we actually staring at?—and what is an effect of the light. What at first appears to be an intricate scene of bending lines and Rorschach-style abstractions morphs as we notice the water droplets, and then the drain in “Kitchen sink (morning).” The drawings require—and thus appear to represent—the very act of paying attention. 

And while the bedroom drawings excel in the sheer level of stuff that Fostel is able to realistically portray, her “Shadow Series” represents a stripping down of elements. The drawings are more open, expansive. In training her attention on the mundane—a floor, a wall, a door—Fostel is allowed the space to explore fleeting moments and feelings. The drawings call to mind laying down on your couch and letting your mind wander; a lazy afternoon in which time slows. 

Fostel began working on “Bedroom Series” three years ago, and that body of work is ongoing. “Shadow Series,” on the other hand, was born out of the pandemic, and Fostel sees it as complete. Prior to those two bodies of work shown at C. Grimaldis Gallery, Fostel depicted Baltimore architecture in “The Baltimore Drawings.” That progression—from public to other people’s private interiors to her own space—parallels the progression that many of us faced in the pandemic as, suddenly, our attention turned inward to our homes and ourselves. 

On her website and social media, Fostel has shared that she suffered a miscarriage during the pandemic. In an artist talk at the gallery, Fostel described it as a great loss, and said that “Shadow Series” was her attempt at finding beauty in the everyday as a way to process grief. 

“Shadow Series” and “Bedroom Series” are two distinct bodies of work—both in subject matter and gallery arrangement—but Fostel’s personal revelation made me consider how much the two sets really share. Through Fostel’s attentive eye, women’s bedrooms appear as refuges, a place to retreat and let their guard down. 

Fostel has stated that the inspiration for “Bedroom Series” was witnessing women rebuild their lives, usually after a major disruption of some kind. “I focused on the bedroom as a unique place where a sole woman occupant can be free of much of the objectification and expectation imposed upon her most anywhere else in her life, which is why her figure is explicitly not shown,” Fostel writes in an artist statement on her website. That sense of calm comes through, as if the occupants of these rooms are finally able to unwind from the world outside. 

With recent news in the back of my brain—about the objectification of and expectations for women’s bodies—I thought about all the people who have experienced pregnancy and miscarriage and abortion, who have cocooned in their bedrooms, and watched the shadows crawl along the walls. 

The shadows, though, as Fostel would likely tell you, are just as much about the light as they are about the darkness. And they change, day to day, and minute to minute, depending on the season, clouds, the time of day, the place in your life.