Our September student ambassador Tim Foster is used to seeing things from a higher perspective. He spends his days working as a high-rise window cleaner, which gives him a literal bird’s eye view of Asheville. He’s also tall. So he almost always sets up in the back row when he takes class at HYA and can still see himself in the front mirror.
“I get used to just seeing my head,” he said, laughing. “I get in the back, because I know what it could feel like to be behind me, either at a music show or in yoga. It can mess someone else up and I’m okay being only able to see my head. I’m used to having my own internal balance.”
That internal balance gets tested in his job, so he works hard at it. His practice has also helped him through recovery from back surgery as well as surgery to repair a double hernia. When he moved to Asheville in 2023, it was only eight months after his back surgery. He found his way to HYA in 2024 and practices both Flow and Hot 26 (where occasionally he’ll even be in the front row).
“When I first got here, it was getting hard to tie my shoes. You know it’s a real good fitness task to be able to tie one shoe while you’re standing and I couldn’t do that,” he said. “Flexibility helps when you’re on a rope and you need to reach something. Sometimes I have to put my leg out and reach out with the leg going one direction and then twist into a different direction. Also being able to have endurance and find a space within yourself, and be able to breathe through something hard, knowing when to breathe out, to allow for a stretch and then to breathe into the stretch. That’s immensely helpful.”
Tim is also an artist whose studio in the River Arts District was flooded by Hurricane Helene, but fortunately did not destroy all his work.
Read more about Tim’s journey:
HYA: How did you find your way to HYA?
Tim: You guys appeared in my Facebook feed, I think it was a day for 30 days for 30 bucks. I’ve been going to yoga for years and I used to do Bikram when I lived in Savannah. And I remember finding out that it was close by and then being like, why don’t I just do it here again? I had back surgery and I also had a double hernia. So it took a while to get back to where I was. I’m so glad I found the place because now I can’t see my life without it. I need it to kind of calm everything down. And it helps me stay fit for work.
HYA: What was the back injury that led to the surgery?
Tim: At 14, I was in a bouncy castle and a kid jumped and landed on my head. And then for about 10 years, I dealt with the pain. I was in England at the time and the only surgeries they had were spinal fusion and discectomy and I didn’t want those. So I waited for a while and I had all types of like physical therapy, ultrasound, electrolysis, cortisone shots and stuff, and none of it ever really worked or helped. And then at 25, I had been managing it for so long and I was kind of fit, but I had a herniated disc and I tried to lift a mattress one day and it messed me up. And then I could barely do anything. And it reminded me of like just being stuck back to when I was 14 again. But then I was able to get laproscopic surgery where they shaved some of the disc away, the bone part, so that the disc, the gel part, could go back in.
HYA: How much did yoga help?
Tim: It helped a lot. I actually did a teacher training for a little while. I feel like everybody hits a point where they end up becoming a teacher after a while, even if it’s just by their presence, being around someone or being open to let them know about it. I think I always struggle talking to people. I’m very quiet usually. But I struggled when I was younger with just getting out and being outgoing, so I did want to go into the teacher training for that. And I I feel like I was getting there and then COVID happened and then it shut the world down for me.
Also, because I do high-rise window cleaning, during Covid all we started doing was hospitals. So I was just like around it all the time and not interacting with anybody anymore. I was still doing yoga a little bit. But my fitness changed and I started doing everything at home. So it’s just nice being back at another studio. And after a while, I’ve gotten to know more and more people. I’m slow at it. I preserve my energy, I’d say.
HYA: Can you talk about your journey as an artist?
Tim: I went to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and I started out at doing metals and jewelry and sculpture. And then once I graduated, I got the job doing high-rise window cleaning and I started doing photography around Savannah and just taking pictures of everything I could. I had a couple art shows with my photography and then that moved more into printing them out onto canvas and then painting on them. And this is all a while I’m trying to balance day job and that at the same time.
It’s hard also to make your name in Savannah as an artist because SCAD is so huge there. So I did a lot of charity work. You know, various things where they were trying to raise money for stuff and I would do live art. And then after doing the live art for a while, then I’d start getting notified by some humane societies and stuff like that and I did a mural for the Humane Society and then that just ended up opening up to other things.
I love doing lots of color and abstraction with a lot of my work and I started really getting more and more into using gold leaf and iridescents. So now I do a lot of stuff on unique papers, like papyrus or carved wood. And then I’ll do illustration work or abstract illustration on on these pieces. So when you look at them from different angles, different things illuminate. I think that comes from trying to find this, you know, eternal illumination or the aura that you can pull together. So that’s kind of where I’m going with it now. I want to get into the Big Crafty this year.
HYA: You and your girlfriend were working out of a studio in the River Arts District, so what happened when Helene hit?
Tim: Luckily, we were on the second floor, so all of my work that I’d brought and that I’d worked on was on a table and it flooded two feet into the studio. So all my work was fine and most of my other artwork supplies were in bins. But my girlfriend’s stuff — she’s a jeweler — a lot of her stuff rusted out. But we did manage to salvage a bunch of stuff. We really lucked out being on the second floor. After the storm there was a place in Swannanoa that was giving a discount on sheds, so we rented a shed and have it on her parents’ property.
HYA: Do you feel settled in Asheville?
Tim: I think it’s wonderful here. I feel like I have forest friends. I feed the animals around our property where we’re living at at the moment and like, there’s a raccoon, I’m friends with a chipmunk, a family of Cardinals, a bear comes by occasionally but I try to keep him away.
