28 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: TREVOR BURROWS - THE FOSTER MUSEUM ABOVE: Tony Foster made the pencil sketch (below) while underwater in scuba gear, then used it to paint Dive 132 Little Cayman, 2013, from the Journey Exploring Beauty. instead of his usual sketchpad. While he normally makes his watercolors in situ, Tony relied on those waterproof sketches to recreate the multicolored wonderland of fish and corals he witnessed in a large-scale painting done on dry land. “That’s so challenging, because watercolors are obviously not going to work underwater,” Alisa notes. At The Foster, Tony’s lovely pictures serve as an invitation for viewers to connect with nature and think about the need to protect these wonderful wild places. Opposite his luminous reef painting is a table set with coloring sheets on clipboards, a tray of seashells, colored pencils, a magnifying glass and laminated photos of sea creatures, an opportunity for young viewers to create underwater scenes of their own. Community outreach is a priority at The Foster, Alisa says, serving both its mission of environmental stewardship and acknowledging its out-of-the-way location. Alisa has long been interested in conservation of a different kind. She started out as a conservator, with a vital behind-the-scenes role caring for objects in museum collections, doing everything from polishing antique silver to repainting damaged porcelain. Over the years, she’s worked on Greek and Roman antiquities and restored a damaged 1950s scale model of a United Airlines DC-8, fabricating replacements for a slew of missing hands, feet and accessories for the plane’s diminutive passengers and crew. She says conservators might spend an entire day up close and personal with a single object. “It allowed me to interact with artworks in a way I really love,” Alisa shares. For someone with a conservaglobe-spanning Exploring Beauty. “I think one of the really wonderful things is that The Foster Museum has free admission. This is for everyone,” says Alisa. “It’s a resource for anybody who wants to come experience it, enjoy it, learn from it.” She walks through a gallery of works from the Exploring Beauty series and exclaims, “Oh, I have to show you the fish!” She explains that Tony solicited recommendations for the most beautiful places from notable scientists, explorers, writers and environmentalists. Sir David Attenborough’s chosen location sent Tony to a reef in the Cayman Islands. An underwater photo shows the artist at work, suited up in scuba gear and sketching with pencils on a sheet of plastic
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