Combining printmaking, painting and commercial printing with the all-embracing goal of increased international understanding, Art Professor Barbara Foster spent four months in Taiwan this spring as a Fulbright senior Scholar. Teaching at the National University of Taiwan, Foster engaged painting students and professional painter Shu-Hwa Chen to create works for print.
“We have actually attempted to use painting students who have very little experience in printmaking,” she says. “(It is wonderful) watching them develop these really incredible pieces because they’re not carrying baggage and limitations that sometimes are set with tradition or with history,” she says.
Foster’s Fulbright project established a professional printing job for Chen and completed all the steps from concept, medium, editioning, documentation and — not to be discounted — celebration. One of the prints will be returned to the SF State Art Department’s print archives, and all Taiwan student printers received a print. Other prints will be distributed to museums in Taiwan.
The Fulbright Scholar Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, with more than 150 participating countries. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, cabinet ministers, CEOs, university presidents and more. They have been awarded 43 Nobel Prizes. Since the Fulbright program’s inception more than 60 years ago, more than 300,000 people have participated.