Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Whether it's phobias or her family's history, the art of Rebecca Foley, a professor of photography at Missouri Western, always has a personal connection. Even our nation's housing crisis, which is Foley's focus in her latest exhibit "There Goes the Neighborhood: Photographs of Foreclosures and Other Homes Lost," has her reflecting on her own constant movement. "It's sort of thinking about my own relationship to the idea of home and what's kind of happening nationally," she says. The exhibit features two series of works. The first is composed of mixed media, with photographs she bought on eBay of homes destroyed by natural disasters turned into collages of paper and thread. The second consists of her photos of foreclosed houses in Columbus, Ohio, where she was an artist in residency at Ohio State University for a year. Foley thinks these images and her own search for "the job" leading to her frequent relocation have a common thread. "It's just kind of that disruption of that natural desire to put down roots," she says."There Goes the Neighborhood: Photographs of Foreclosures and Other Homes Lost" is on display at the Potter Hall Fine Arts Gallery at Missouri Western through Nov. 11.