chantel foretich

Lives and works in santa fe, new mexico

Artist statement

I am a sculptor based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My works are small-scale versions of real, imagined and literary scenes, mechanized and illuminated with various motors and lights. The shrunken places are charged in some way, built because of their accumulated history, fleeting exchange, idea, offer of respite, or role in violence, and can be thought of as a constructed relic, small enough to imagine inside a human body, sized in the same way that memories recede, but fill the body upon recollection. My works can resemble stage set maquettes, or, not-quite-to-scale architectural models. I made my first shrunken version of a real place in the 1990s when I visited what was described as a Catholic, lesbian bar in Paris that did not allow photography to ensure the safety of its patrons. I've exhibited mostly in non-traditional spaces including libraries, storefronts, empty warehouses and closets.

Artwork

• Stephen's Service from The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, 2022. mixed media including light and a motor that sends car in circles and activates wind-shield wipers on vintage toy car
• Jagarundi, La Campana, 2021. mixed media including motor that rotates felling axe through the handmade clay and hair body of jagarundi and light
• Scholarship, from Invisible Man by Ralph Waldo Ellison , 2022. mixed media including vibrating motor, light and glass eyeball
• Dream from Seaside Houses by John Cheever , 2022. mixed media including light and electric motor sending swan glass in and out of handblown glass, light
• Danny's Gift from Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck , 2021. mixed media including motor that maneuvers miniature vacuum cleaner across surface of paperback
• Dr. Hari Jot's Final Treatment Room , 2023. mixed media including blue light, working transistor radio, electric light, acupuncture needles, vintage and handmade furniture, handbound booklet