Foster’s ‘Threads of a Life’ art exhibition offers US ‘travelogue’

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Image for Foster's 'Threads of a Life' exhibition is titled, "Rural Links, Poles and Road." There is an enormous expanse of blue sky hazy with thin clouds. A light gray rural road runs between fields. Electric poles fade from view on one side of the road with golden field beneath and white farm buildings in the distance. Image by Nancy I. Foster courtesy of Oliver Art Center.

Photo of Nancy I. Foster’s painting, “Rural Links, Poles and Road,” courtesy of the artist.

From an announcement

FRANKFORT, Mich. ‒ The Oliver Art Center (OAC) will host “Threads of a Life,”  a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Nancy I. Foster, from July 18 through August 21, 2026.

Members of the public are invited to an opening reception to be held 5-7 p.m., Saturday, July 18. Refreshments will be served.

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A lifelong painter and Oliver Art Center member artist, Nancy Foster’s paintings have been exhibited throughout the western and midwestern United States and are held in both private and corporate collections. Foster has lived and painted in San Francisco, urban Chicago and northwest Michigan.

“Nancy’s work is a travelogue, capturing the spirit and emotion of the places she has lived in and visited across the country and around the world,” stated OAC Executive Director Tamara Hoffbauer. “This show features work from throughout her entire career, from early still life paintings to later landscapes, and finishes out with recent abstracts that she creates even with failing eyesight.

Image of Foster's painting, "View to a Presidio," part of the retrospective of her work showing soon at Oliver Art Center. The painting is a streetscape looking down a road and fading into the distance. One side of the street has a large tree and flowering bushes and two-story buildings ; the other side has a pole with a pennant, a couple of buildings and a forest. The sky above is light blue with cumulus clouds in the distance as well as a green hill. Image of the painting courtesy of Nancy I. Foster.
“View to a Presidio.” Image courtesy of Nancy Foster.

“It is unusual for the Oliver to produce solo exhibitions,” Hoffbauer continued. “In this case, we knew that Nancy’s work would not only fill our gallery spaces beautifully but provide an outstanding experience for our visitors due to the strength and appeal of her work.”

Foster knew she was an artist from an early age. She earned a B.A. from Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and studied in Illinois at the Art Institute of Chicago, Evanston Art Center in Evanston and North Shore Art League in Winnetka.

Her life has been shaped by seasonal migrations and changing landscapes. Summers at Crystal Lake with her grandparents were followed by yearly visits to the Big Horn Mountains, Aspen and Snowmass in Colorado, locations in Arizona and international travel.

Image for Foster's exhibition is of her painting, "Under the Blue Canopy." The blue sky and clouds dominate the rural landscape with a sliver of open field dotted by a copse or two of trees. Photo of the painting courtesy of the artist.
“Under the Blue Canopy.” Image courtesy of Nancy Foster.

Of her journeys, Foster has said: “My migrations across this huge land have sparked an abiding interest in formations of the land—observing the effects of wind, water, rivers, the thrusting of tectonic plates, the nature of geological time, questions of scale, and, finally, man’s hand in changing and marking the land.”

This exhibit is an opportunity to travel across America through Foster’s eyes — taking in humble Midwestern landscapes, romantic vistas of the Great Lakes, the edges and shadows of urban Chicago and the majesty of nature, from Michigan to the West Coast.

Image for Foster's "Threads of a Life" is of a a steep dune with some vegetation rising from the bottom left corner of the painting to the top right corner. Beyond the dune are aspen or popple trees fringing the hill in the distance and beyond those is blue Lake Michigan. Jutting out into the lake in the far distance is a treed point of land that could be Pyramid Point in Leelanau County. The clouds above the dune and lake are blue near the horizon fading to white above. The painting is called Windswept Dune Above Lake Michigan. Image is courtesy of Nancy Foster.
“Windswept Dune Above Lake Michigan.” Image courtesy of Nancy Foster.

The Oliver Art Center is located at 132 Coast Guard Rd., Frankfort. Admission is free. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and noon-4 p.m., Sunday. For more information go to www.oliverart.org or call the center at (231) 352-4151.

Read about other artists and exhibitions HERE.

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