Josephine Foster instills wonder.

It is because of everything she ever was and is. Because when she sings, you hear her inner bonfire speak. It’s because even when she speaks she sings and your own inferno melts away. When she constructs a sentence she loops her grammar in ways that give wisdom to internal sensation. And when she paints, you can feel her unearthing odd fossils from her curious cabinets. Josephine Foster connects with us through all elements with grace and vivacity, through the delicious way she has of existing as a familiar symbol of kindness and honesty in equal parts.

She once wrote to me calling me a kindred spirit: the effect of this I liken to an inner geyser. Jo wrote a song called called Geyser. To share artistic liberties in a space I love so much, with a voice I listen to most days, is more than a geyser. It’s a marble throne for a dream that has come true. One my wild imagination couldn't even have conjured. 

Today I gape in wonder at nature’s bizarre marvels. Anything leaves me with a haunting sense of the strangeness of our insides. Small things mischievously call my attention to minor similarities between my skeleton and my favorite words (:bodices are boned!) I paint a deep study into the grace of the human animal and I excavate the terror of my gestures. Things underwater transform with ballet-like charm: a thrust and jerk on land become a wiggle and a pulse with agua.. Consider Anew Old Adage my work’s newest basin, one that is volcanic.

To be given this opportunity has strengthened my wilted backbone to ward off the fiercest fates. Being in this  room and vandalizing its walls only to know you’re splattered here too, Jo, it is burning water!

Sugar Pie I’m Not The Same!

 - exhibition text by Alexia Marmara