Compelling Presence |
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"Shards and Monoliths" was Foon's first exhibition at the Arlington Arts Center. Approaching the exhibition up a flight of stairs, elongated forms with black lava-like surfaces suggested a forest torched by fire. Broken elements tubmled forward littering the gallery floor. Sharpened red sticks sliced the columns dangerously. The the viewer noticed other brightly painted triangular and tube-like shapes affixed to the surfaces. Stopped short the viewer shifted gears quickly. Here was a playful intelligence at work, an artist who assembled materials and forms in conceptually challenging ways. As the executive director of the Arlington Arts Center, a showcase for emerging regional artists, I immediately was intrigued.
Foon is a comelling presence. He is handsome with luminous skin, enormous eyes, a mop of straight black hair and eyebrow-length bangs. Still it is his intelligence and ehtusiasm that attract notice. After Foon became a resident artist at the Arts Center in 1988, I saw him almost daily for four years. At first we met on the run and at odd times of the day or night. This was not unusual since Foon was juggling three part-time teaching jobs at area colleges and I was working twelve-hour days to keep this nonprofit contemporary visual arts space alive. I was struck by Foon's willingness to share ideas, contribute his time, and, most important, his commitment to making art -- in spite of a frantic schedule. Many nights Foon was hauling wood into his studio at midnight.
When he encountered a problem with a work-in-progress or needed another opinion in honing an idea, Foon would seek out fellow artists and staff. He often would invite me into his studio. It was a shared space, the size of a typical school classroom, which it once had been. It was filled with power tools and equipment and stacks of wood, all neatly arranged by size on a rack. The wood, usually oak but also purple heart, mahogany and walnut, ranged from pencil width to thick boards. These he cut, stacked, glued, carved, stained and / or painted into elegant column-like forms or more intimate interlocking wall or floor pieces. The genesis of the work in this catalogue derives from the work Foon created while he had his studio at the Arts Center (1988 - 1994). I would sit in a ratty chair while he showed me meticulously colored drawings of new ideas or we would walk around the current sculpture-in-progress. Foon would describe his problem and options. In theory I was critiquing his work, but I knew better. I listened, offering a thought now and then to keep Foon talking. Once we even turned a sculpture upside down to see it from a different perspective. I learned a tremendous amount about the artistic process during these studio talks because Foon is a born teacher. Rarely did we resolved the problem right then. Nevertheless, the next day work had resumed -- fast and deliberate. Foon, like many people, clarifies his ideas through talk.
Foon designs sculptures that are deliberately precarious and pushes materials to their limits. Then he worries up to the final moment before the last element is assembled if it will work. They always do because Foon is precise. He test every detail, calculates load and stress and considers every possibility for nuances or disaster. When he was installing the 40 foot-long outdoor sculpture, "Vertebrae VI," at the Arts Center in 1992, I had no doubt that the steel bolts sticking up through the concrete pad would mesh perfectly with the holes in form being lowered by crane. I knew a hurricane would not topple this sinewy piece, but Foon was a wreck.
Foon worries a lot, but this is not surprising when one considers the status of and struggles experienced by all artists in this country, especially artists with children. He spends so much time in his car, driving from home to work to the studio, that he needs a pager to keep in touch with Fung, his patient wife, to orchestrate their faimily's comings and goings. He now is a full-time assistant professor of art at the University of Maryland. Fung also works full-time. Still, Foon feels he needs to squeeze in teaching at the Corcoran School of Art to survive. It angers me to see how we so undervalue artists in this society. I wonder what richness is lost. Yet the diversity and number of thoughtful sculptures that Foon has created amaze me. When does he find time? These works of art attest to a demanding spirit and a principled mind.
Katherine T. Freshley
Program Officer,
Eugene and
Agnes E. Meyer Foundation