Broad Street Meets Bauhaus

2017 30.5”h, 18.25”w, collage

The architecture of Broad Street, Philadelphia is the topic. The school that provided Foer’s formal training as an artist, Philadelphia College of Art, now U Arts is prominent. Collaged images of other buildings include the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art; Girard Bank, now the Ritz Hotel; City Hall; the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Fairmount Waterworks and, most importantly, a Bauhaus apartment in Tel-Aviv. The Gershman Y is in the foreground. It looks like a swimming pool, which the artist represented with small blueprint images of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Foer swam in the pool while in art school, though now it is abandoned and graffitied. No one is allowed entry so she could not photograph the space for this collage series. Ironically, the school’s archives, stored in the basement, were flooded recently, making Foer’s interpretation of the pool even more relevant. The inclusion of iconic Tel-Aviv architecture contrasts with the rest of the collaged images. The artist comments, “Our training at PCA was strictly in the Bauhaus tradition,but when we were on the streets surrounding our school, it was a cacophony of styles. When I arrived in Tel-Aviv, I found myself surrounded by elegant, architectural examples of what I had been taught in art school in Philadelphia.

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