daniel forest

la cieneguilla, new mexico, usA

My work recently and abruptly shifted, from production of large-scale sculptural installations to making large, hand-coiled and slab-built vessels that serve multiple purposes: firstly, to return to something essential; secondly, to fulfill a desire to create beauty. The sweetness engendered by making them helped offset the fractured uncertainty that permeated every minute of every day, beginning in mid-March. Thirdly, I wanted to challenge myself to create a new design that didn’t mimic any previous vessel form I could easily recognize.

I work exclusively in recycled clay, hand-wedged from half a dozen sources. The character of each vessel consequently reflects the qualities of varying proportions of earthenware, porcelain, micaceous, terra cotta, and fiber clay. These vessels are large and time consuming to make—exactly what I needed to give purpose and direction to a strange and rudderless time in my life. It took seven vessels, each encouraging a new approach, until I arrived at a form that blew me away. Each one fills my arms fully when held and they are supremely beautiful. I like to think they reflect universal proportions and are timeless forms—unlike my sculpture which always seems to bear the mark of the moment.

This intimate work will carry me through until I’m back in a studio. My large-scale project Shelter was halfway through production when the pandemic hit and I’ve been forced to shelve it, short term, for lack of access to a kiln or a space to install it. I am in my Senior year of the BFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and, though there’s no guarantee, I aim to have it completed and installed on campus by the Spring of 2021.

My practice has been gradually moving away from provocative pedestal-based one-offs, to work that consciously engages my audience closer to home, deep inside where the issues percolate. That for me is revolutionary. What this pandemic has shown me is my ability to flex with the times, between several points of reference. But my heart is in the larger installation work, and that’s what I strive to return to, because it has the power to shift consciousness. And there’s nothing trivial about that.

BIO: daniel forESt

Daniel Forest was born in Long Beach, California, in 1959, and came to ceramics in 2017, after a long and varied career, including 20 years as a massage therapist, and stints working in landscape design, antique and textile restoration, and as an installer at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA. He is currently enrolled in the BFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM, having completed an Associate in Art degree at Santa Fe Community College in 2019, where he was assistant to James Marshall, Head of Ceramics. He earned a BS in Biological Sciences at Penn Valley Community College in 1984.

Daniel writes: “My hand built ceramic sculptural work finds its roots in the blue-collar immigrant neighborhood I grew up and played in, adjacent to heavy industry in Los Angeles, where the power of the ocean met the shipyards and oil industry and endless railyards merged with the massive belching edifice of Bethlehem Steel works. These corrosive influences have fused with a profound love of nature, and a deep understanding of biology, human anatomy and physiology. I find great beauty in the interplay between nature and industry, especially what happens to obsolete equipment that’s been left to degrade, corroding slowly back into its elements—developing surfaces I can only strive to recreate. My sculptural explorations in invented biomorphic forms and fictionalized industrial abstractions are a means to express my anguish at the great undoing of the natural world; I hope to heighten awareness of our responsibility as stewards moving through it.”

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rate of affection

Daniel Forest nominates Cannupa Hanska Luger