Merle foster

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The studio was a house in Markham and it was just filled with models and moulds all over the place. The most interesting spot was her basement where careful seeking out netted me with several works that she agreed would be reproductable and adds to her collection.
We talked about her teacher E. Hahn who was at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. She told of her special education long before she got to college. The family went all out to see that she got what she wanted in the arts.

So from the very beginning she was well prepared to last all those years and still laugh at it all. The time she went to New York City and talked to a famous sculptor who told her to give it up, go home and be a housewife.

Now I am talking about the late 1960's & 1974 when I was already steeped in information about Canadian Sculptors but there she was the comic fun loving person she was all her life. Fun to talk to and gain scads of information and inside stories about the person side of those she knew during her life.

Her drawings of the human figure were nothing but the best anyone could imagine. Her subjects for sculpting ranged from the serious portrait to the comic "shop Lady" sitting in her full skirt at the Kensington Market in Toronto. This work we got cast in bronze. Her "Ice Capade" got cast also as did &Two sisters". The other works in plaster are still in my collection.

When Merle and her sister moved to eastern Ontario, I went the once to visit with two ladies that had known her in the early days. It was a long trip from Elgin to the McIntosh farm near Cornwall.

I heard just the other day that she had died a couple of years ago so I have dated her death 2000.

In our conversation about work she did for Architects she said it was great right up to the depression of 1930 and then the bottom dropped out of it all. The Braye Nash building on Yonge Street had the decorations (exterior) done by her. It had been taken over by the C.B.C T.V station and painted a pink colour. On another note she did some work on Casa Loma for the Architect. The Oak designs on the Harry Oakes home in Niagara Falls are the result of her work. The granite Club fireplace and window boxes was her works too. This building has been torn down. Downtown Bay Street has a couple of designs away up as decoration.

Her talent took her into costume designs for Carnivals and Malabar's Costumers of Toronto. I have no record of them but she said she had fun. She even believed she was "Not a sculptor's sculptor" and I was quick to tell her how she still made a business of it all. She supported her father and mother and her sister Pory did Mache work for the "Brownies". It is fun when she told me she got mad at her sister one day. While doing some plasterwork she left her feet in the plaster too long and it set. Great balls of fire.

She was teaching ceramics the first time I met her. These classes were for seniors. Pinch pots and ashtrays were the subjects. Some small ceramic pieces resulted in a good collection on the shelf. I got a few but they have since been given to a charity and no more record after that episode

Yes, she is the last on this list of sculptors but she has to give me a sense of both feet on the ground. She was an artist and lived that life to the end. Thank you Pory and thank you Merle for making me a happy man for the rest of my life.

She is not the last on the list, but the first to have lived so long. I got to know Merle on a personal basis. I went to her studio many times. She visited our apartment when we lived on Charles Street in Toronto. I looked over every aspect of her life and laughed many times with her and her sister Pory.

Merle Foster 1899 - 2000