THE ARTS ALLIANCE CENTER AT CLEAR LAKE

Tamara Foster began her adult life by marrying at 18, having five children, and allowing her weight to balloon to over 330 pounds. She may not have realized that her ability to carve, sculpt, and shape clay would carry her body and spirit through an incredibly difficult journey toward reclaiming her physical and emotional health.

After her husband went on disability due to his own obesity-related health issues, Foster decided to go back to school, get her degree and become certified to teach art. Even as her new job taught her how to stand on her own two feet for the first time in her life, it also made her realize two things -- she had to leave her marriage of 25 years, and she had to lose weight.

Upon accepting a job in a tiny school in Harden, she knew her marriage was in real trouble when her husband refused to move there with her. “I was very large then, said Foster, now divorced and teaching art at Channelview High School. A coworker at school had a gastric bypass surgery, but it had not occurred to me that I could do that. I initiated the process for myself.” With that decision, Foster’s own metamorphosis began. After undergoing gastric bypass surgery in 1996, she went from 330 pounds to 165 in six months. “Because it happened so fast, it took me at least three years to emotionally accept all the changes in my body. I never went to a therapist. My therapy was always sculpture.”

Drawn to sculpt the female torso, Foster said she expressed her emotional distress by focusing on shaping them to reflect each stage of recovery she faced. “Having surgery is the best thing I ever did, but there is a lot of stuff that comes with it”, said Foster. Sculpting came to me to help me deal with the package I was left with. The package was much smaller, but far from perfect. While the dramatic weight loss created a major positive change in her life, she was unable to accept that the body she saw in the mirror was her own. “I weighed 145 pounds, but I still had 335-pound skin, she said. I fit nicely into clothes, but it was very painful to see my naked body with so much loose skin. I had reconstructive surgery to remove it two years ago.” Again, sculpture helped her deal with her changing body image. “I prepared for the surgery by sculpting busts of a female form -- just from the thighs up and the neck down. They are not perfect. My sculptures have a tummy, a bottom, and folds of skin. I played with it, using texture, wrinkles, and different colors. Skin tones, flesh, and nudity meant something very different to me at this point. Mentally, this was my way of handling the surgical process that I was going to face.”

Before reconstructive surgery, she put holes in her torsos and tied the pieces together with string, stretched the pieces out on boards, or rearranged the parts of the torso to prepare herself for the extreme surgery to come. “I took all the broken pieces, and put them back together. It was like rebuilding myself, she explained. She added that in her mind, she had never seen herself as she truly was at 335 pounds. “Sculpture was my way of taking what was in my head and make it a reality, step by step, she said. I learned that what you think about yourself matters. I didn’t have these surgeries for anyone but myself. Creating these sculptures helped me put myself back together.”

Today, Tamara Foster is healthy, happy, and full of energy. “I would talk to anyone about my journey through the surgery and how sculpting got me through it”, she said. “It’s about being content with who I am. It’s so important.” Tamara Foster’s sculptures will be part of the Body Image Show at The Arts Alliance Center at Clear Lake opening August 18-September 22.

(This article was written by Katherine Adams and published in the July, 2011 issue of Coast magazine.)

For more information about art education at The Arts Alliance Center at Clear Lake, please call 281-335-7777 and ask for the Director of Art Education, Deborah Kidwell. Visit TAACCL at www.taaccl.org for complete information about classes and events at The Arts Alliance Center at Clear Lake, or join us on Facebook or Twitter.