Temple Hills Artist Pieces Together Riverside Tableau for National Harbor

by Ryan McDermott | Staff Writer, Gazette.net

Along the grand staircase that leads to the water’s edge at National Harbor are two spaces filled with small tiles of blue and green and orange and white. In both spots, the tiles connect to display scenes of life along the Potomac River: crabs, sea turtles, sailors — the animals and people who reside in and around the Potomac.

The unique mosaic, which took nearly nine months to complete, gave Temple Hills artist Cheryl Foster more creative freedom than she ever had for a public installation. And Foster couldn’t be more pleased with the finished product.

‘‘I’m so happy with the way it turned out,” she said.

In August 2007, National Harbor developer Milton V. Peterson was referred to Foster by a regional art consultant when he was looking for local artists to decorate the project site. Although Peterson had final approval, he made it clear that he wanted Foster to stretch her creativity.

‘‘He asked me, ‘What would you dream of doing?’” Foster said.

She went around the area, collecting stories and photographs from the people who live near the river.

‘‘I wanted to include the culture of the water in my narrative,” said Foster, 58. ‘‘I hope the two mosaics relay that story.”

Foster’s journey toward becoming a mosaic artist started as a child in Washington, D.C., when her father, John Thompson, used to shoot pheasant.

‘‘He was a hunter and he’d come back with a pheasant and we’d have to help him pluck all the feathers,” she said. ‘‘Well, we would take the feathers and make Jackie Kennedy pillbox hats out of them.”

Foster said that experience was her first memory of taking small objects and putting them together to create a larger object.

Her parents, though not artists, fostered a love for the arts and encouraged Foster’s exploits.

‘‘My parents were in real estate but they always did hands-on activities with us and they were always creative,” Foster said. ‘‘We were exposed to all of the arts — dance, music, art. And those experiences have applied to everything I do in my life, not just my art.”

In the late 1960s, Foster earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art from Howard University.

‘‘I still wasn’t sure I really wanted to be an artist, though,” she said. ‘‘I’d always had a passion for art, but wasn’t sure I wanted to do it as a career. The light bulb hadn’t gone off that I could make a living doing this.”

So Foster started making money as a real estate appraiser and worked on a variety of art projects on the side. She got into mural painting and had some of her work commissioned, but it was not until a trip to Philadelphia in the mid-1980s that she realized she needed to make art her career.

One day, she found herself working on a mural across the street from Philadelphia mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar.

‘‘He had a profound influence on me,” Foster said. ‘‘Everything is Isaiah. He owns it. He claims it. I feel like I’m finally just getting to that point.”

Foster said she just approached Zagar about working with him. In the days to follow, she would finish her mural at night after helping Zagar during the day.

‘‘I walked across the street and asked him if I could help him,” she said.

The mosaic was one of Zagar’s signature South Philadelphia installations. It included glass, bottles, tiles and found objects to make up a large, colorful body of work. Zagar works exclusively in Philadelphia and has had pieces commissioned all over the city.

Zagar said he welcomed Foster’s help.

‘‘I was really nervous one day because I had no one to work with,” he said. ‘‘And she came running by and she stopped. I said ‘hello’ and we worked together for that day and ended up working together for weeks.”

Zagar showed Foster how mosaic could be a powerful medium.

‘‘Broken pieces seem to resolve something important for me in that they pull together something that was already powerful,” Zagar said. ‘‘The pieces of it are as powerful as the whole. The brokenness is not a detriment to its beauty because we, over time, become broken and scarred and still can be very beautiful.”

Over the years, Foster has produced public pieces in the Washington, D.C., area as well as in North Carolina. She also has taught workshops at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the District.

In Prince George’s County, Foster completed a mosaic on a wall at Largo Town Center and a wall at the Morgan Metro Stop in Capitol Heights off Central Avenue. Foster also is in talks with Peterson about another project at the Harbor.

Peterson said her talents were impeccable. Foster generally takes colored glass and tile to make a narrative of the public area where her art sits.

‘‘She is amazing,” he said. ‘‘She can do anything. I want her to do more pieces for me.”

But the National Harbor piece was the first opportunity she had to embrace the national spotlight.

‘‘I’m not an internationally known artist,” she said. ‘‘I’m just Cheryl from around the way.”

But Foster is proud of the work she did at National Harbor and said she thinks it will live and grow with the Harbor.

With public mosaics you leave your art in a place where it has to feel comfortable,” she said. ‘‘It has to bleed and breathe the story of the people around it.”