Listen to the interview here!
Brian Foreman
Toni Reece: Hi there. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. I’m Toni Reece, and today I am with Brian Foreman. Welcome to the Project, Brian.
Brian Foreman: Thank you, Toni.
Toni: Brian, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Brian: I am the Program Director down at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts located in Reading, Pennsylvania. We are the largest of our kind as far as an arts center throughout the greater U.S. We offer a number of visual and performing arts programs through our community catalog, as well as privatized instruction. We have 38 artist studios. Currently there are a number vacant, and we are seeking artist applicants for those studios, but it’s a great community, a ton of art, and tons of fun. We always have something new and interesting going on.
Toni: Thank you so much for being part of the Project. You’re right, it’s an amazing facility down there. Let’s go into the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Brian: My background being in education, I always believed that inspiration as far as art for me would have been the ability to teach the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the mute to speak. Art creates breakthroughs in all barriers through all civilizations. It’s a method for communicating, storytelling. Art as an inspiration for me is pretty much the key element to getting your story across.
Who inspires me through art would be just about anybody that’s out practicing – from the gentleman who offers caricatures on a street corner to the art teachers in the schools who have to find ways to make a class work with deteriorating budgets to the artists out trying to make a living selling their work and selling themselves as a professional. Inspiration I feel comes in all forms, all shapes, and all sizes through the art community.
Toni: How do you put that inspiration into practice here in Berks County?
Brian: I’ve been a Berks County native all my life, and I’ve always tried to involve myself in the things that drive me, education being the key. I worked with the county immigration center to develop an artist program up there. I’ve worked with the Opportunity House to develop a summer artist program down there as well.
Finding my home at the GoggleWorks a little over a year ago, I have a world of bounty at my fingertips. I can get involved with the local community as well as the regional community, bringing students in, to always keep myself involved and find things that are current trends for art, new instruction that we can bring in for people to take, give the person who’s always wanted to be involved in art and never found their niche the idea that you have to sample a little here and there, make your mistakes, and then find your success through that.
Toni: Is that the part that inspires you, when someone feels that they want to demonstrate or they have this talent for art, and you help them realize that talent, or you see that they have just realized that talent and brought it to life – or is it the breakthrough, like you said, the ability to take this thing in your head and put it into some sort of an art form and to tell a story with the piece? Which one of those inspires you the most?
Brian: I think more of the storytelling. I think you get a more heartfelt passion through the opportunity to create something that gives you a voice. Individuals are varied in their learning abilities through all forms, and once they find that one art medium that helps them put words to what they want to say really drives everybody. I love when I see that light in their eye when they’re in the classroom and they’ve just realized that’s what they’re going to do.
It’s not a judgmental art that we do at our facility. We don’t professionally critique in the classrooms. We’re constantly encouraging people to go outside of their comfort zone, to break away through a traditional art format and try something new and exciting and abstract – really just get your hands in there and work the medium.
Really, that is key for what inspires me the most. I see that light switch go off, and you see a smile in their head, or they’re just totally zoned into their artwork, whatever they’re making. Through trial and error, they have success, and the success is they’ve completed something that gives them voice.
Toni: Brian, do you have an example of bearing witness to something like this, whether it’s through the GoggleWorks or another example that you may have come across in your past where it totally moved you?
Brian: In my early years when I was teaching art in high school, I would get kids that had limited to no experience in art. They wanted to take it because they were curious. That curiosity had a bit of fear to it, because they were being graded. It was always worry. “I don’t know if I want to.” But then, when you work with them and you show them the steps and you teach art on a more comfortable, less professional basis, you see that they find their peace. They find their place in the art room, and they just create. Every minute they’re in the room, they’re creating.
I’d have students that would sign out of study halls to come down to my classroom. I only taught part time, but I would stay there the whole day doing a number of other things, and when you see the continuation of students over a course of time come back into the room and always ask questions, and they’re always looking on the Internet – “Can we try this? Can we do this? Can we go to this museum?” Once you’ve seen that inspiration in them, it reciprocates back. It just puts a smile on your face cheek to cheek, and it really makes it all worth the while.
Toni: Who in Berks County inspires you?
Brian: I couldn’t really say one person. I would have to say mostly everybody I come in contact with, in some shape or form. I’ve worked with paraprofessionals that are very large philanthropists. They support the arts. Parents who are coming into the classroom – they ask questions – “I just wanted to make sure my son or daughter is doing well. They’re curious about art school. What do I do to prep my son or daughter for art school?”
The kids – just seeing them continually come back to the classroom, day in and day out. They always want to be there. We run an afterschool program with the GoggleWorks, and I see the same families bringing new family members to the program. “Oh, my son loved it so much, but now he’s getting into high school, he’s got college to start worrying about – but my niece wants to get in the same classes.” There’s a reciprocation of success that’s going on through the GoggleWorks, through these rooms, and I can't really say that one person inspires me more than the other. They all seem to have their place in my heart as far as inspiration.
It’s seeing that passion alive in the community, that renaissance with art right now that’s going on. That’s the inspiration, in the community – that’s what inspires me.
Toni: We really have to share that inspired passion just at so many levels. I’m listening to you talk about how inspired you are by parents and the children and what goes on on a daily basis for you, and that’s in the heart of Reading. We have to shout that more, don’t we?
Brian: We do. We work closely with the Reading School District art teachers. We also work with all the art teachers throughout the districts in greater Berks County. The one thing that we’ve continually tried to do is pick up where the schools can't. Limited funding in the art room presents hardships for all our teachers.
We try to offer things that the kids aren’t going to see in the classroom. When they go to the parents and say, “GoggleWorks is going to offer this,” the kids are there. They’re calling, they’re emailing. “We’re really interested. They took this away from us last year. We can't do it anymore.” That community outreach that we’re doing, getting involved in the art rooms, getting the parents involved, that’s a key component to supporting this effort that we’re doing.
The kids are great. They come in, they take the classes, but mom and dad have to be involved. You see that support structure at home, and it comes into the classroom. It really helps.
Toni: What do you want your legacy to be, Brian?
Brian: For me, I would say in my footsteps to leave a variety of doors available for others to come through. There are no barriers with the art world. To see people release that sense of fear that they may have about going into a studio and creating something, I want to give people the notion that you don’t have to be afraid.
Art is not an instant success. Art is a trial and error medium. You need to go out. You need to just do it. You don’t care who is looking at it. You make art for yourself, and that’s it. For me, that would be my legacy.
Toni: Again, someone that is showing up for the Get Inspired! Project who is living their legacy. Brian, thank you so much for being part of this Project, and I look forward to connecting with some of these art programs down at the GoggleWorks. Thank you for being here.
Brian: Thank you very much, Toni. I appreciate it.
Toni: Take care.
