Michael deForest
biography |
portfolio | artists listing
b. 1949, Denver, Colorado
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2009 Hot Tea!, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Craft in America: Focus on Wood, The Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, MA
2008 dysFUNctional, Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
2007 Cascadia, Maltwood Museum, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
2006 Ingrained Passion, Function + Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
Sitka Art Invitational, World Forestry Center, Portland, OR
Timere Vacui, Beppu-Wiarda Gallery, Portland, OR
2005 Contain, Solo Exhibition, University of Portland, Portland, OR
Scratching the Surface: Art and Content in Contemporary Wood, Mobilia Gallery,
Cambridge, MA
NuArt 05: Juror’s Choice, Anacortes Arts Festival, Anacortes, WA
Craft Biennial: A Biennial Review of NW Art & Craft, Hoffman Gallery, Portland, OR
Birds of a Feather, Beppu Gallery, Pacific City, OR
2004 Artist in Residency Show, Hoffman Gallery, Portland, OR
2003 Putting the Pieces Together, Solo Exhibition, Talisman Gallery, Portland, OR
Michael de Forest Furniture & Objects, Solo Exhibition, Talisman Gallery, Portland, OR
Contented: Contemporary Furniture and Wood Artists, Diamond Tanita Gallery,
Portland, OR
Turned Multiples III, Touring
Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO
2002 All Nudes Review, Beppu Gallery, Pacific City, OR
Fables and Chairs II, Solo Exhibition, Cabell Center, Portland, OR
2001 Fables and Chairs, Solo Exhibition, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR
2000 Wood Works, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR
1999 2.3.5…, Collaborative Installations, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR
1998 Dumb and Evil, Calhoun Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
1996 The Next Generation, Meredith Gallery, Baltimore, MD
1995 ArtQuake, Best Design, Portland, OR
1992 Art Quake, Best of Show, Portland, OR
Grand Prix des Metiers d’Arts, Montreal, Quebec
1988 Form/Function/Furniture II, NW Gallery of Fine Woodworking, Seattle, WA
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2008 Fine Woodworking Magazine, July/August, Issue 199, pp 81. “Rediscovering Milk Paint.”
Portland Business Journal. Winter, pp 22-23. Crafty Collectors.
2006 Oregon Art Beat. April 13, Episode 723. Oregon Public Broadcasting.
2005 American Style Magazine. August. Pp 37. “The Crow.”
2004 500 Wood Bowls: Bold & Original Designs Blending Tradition & Innovation. Leier, Ray;
Peters, Jan & Wallace, Kevin. Lark Books, Sterling Publications, New York, NY.
American Crafts Magazine. Feb/Mar. Pp 80. “Suture Series: The Rat Bowl-Survival and
Adaptability,” Oregon Home. Sept/Oct. Pp 19. “Pieces with Personas.”
2002 Scratching The Surface. Hosaluk, Michael. North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Hot Tea! 2009
The images on these teapots come from my interest in 40's, 50's, 60's black and white photography and more specifically photo-journalism. My parents were in the newspaper business when I was growing up. My Dad worked for a daily paper in Denver for a number of years in the fifties and later they both worked for and ran a small weekly newspaper in the suburbs of Denver. The daily paper was housed in a cavernous, dark hulk of a mid-century building. My father's desk was one of many in a large, high ceiling room close enough to the massive two story print room that the roar of the machines and smell of the ink filled every crack and crevice. This mix of modern gothic space and gritty, loud machinery added a sense of no-nonsense, tough in-your-face kind of character to my perception of what journalism and the photographic images associated with it were all about.
Both of my parents took black and white photos of local high school sports events; social affairs; and significant crimes, accidents, and political proceedings. At times these photos caught people at their most vulnerable. This element of candid vulnerability combined with the high visual contrast of the black and white medium of the photography has always intrigued me. The capturing of a moment and in a medium that reeks of reality, but is so obviously, because of its lack of color, only a representation, interests me as an artist who deals in figurative imagery and usually in bold, though non-representational color.
Years ago I learned about a New York photographer for The Daily News and The Daily Mirror, Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 - December 26, 1968), who went by the pseudonym WeeGee. His photos were usually shot at night and included murder victims and suspects; street people and socialites; strippers, transvestites, prostitutes, and crowd scenes. His work embodies the reality of urban capriciousness and pathos and therefore the capture of vulnerability that interests me. In researching his photos and subsequent books I came across a collection of a century of police mug shots. I chose two of them to carve and paint on the sides of the tea pot. This body of photos is poignant for the window it provides into the subjects' guilt, defiance, embarrassment, obliviousness, anger, hurt, boredom, cockiness, or just plain resignation. But most of all they portray a vulnerability due to the lack of control of their situation. I have tried to capture some of all of this in my renderings of two mug shots of the characters on either side of the "This Is My Handle, This Is My Spout".
The body of the teapots came from a constructive method of creating form from individual, discrete pieces made somewhat at random. I sculpted a female torso in clay in order to create the irregularly curved molds to bend the wood that would eventually be sewn into vessels, such as the teapots. The torso surface was arbitrarily divided into sections by spreading paper over the surface following the compound curves until the paper either started to fold or tear. This represented the largest area that veneer would bend before buckling or splitting. Each piece of paper was then cut and taped to the sculpture. Then paper was spread out next to it, and the next, etc., until the entire sculpture was covered with 137 pieces of paper. I cut into the sculpture wherever two pieces of paper touched and created a border. 1” wide waxed paper strips were put into the slots that the cuts created to fashion dams for plaster molds. Once the sculpture was covered with plaster the surface was ground down until the paper strips were revealed. Wooden wedges were pounded between pieces to loosen up each section of plaster and remove them. Tape was put around the edges of the negative plaster molds forming dams to receive reinforced polyurethane to create positive molds. Three pieces of glued veneer are then placed on these positive molds which then go into a vacuum press to bend the wood to the molds. These pieces are then trimmed, assembled temporarily to configure a container or vessel, drilled, carved, painted, and sewn together. Each teapot body is made from interconnecting two sections of the torso’s left leg.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2009 Hot Tea!, del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Craft in America: Focus on Wood, The Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, MA
2008 dysFUNctional, Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
2007 Cascadia, Maltwood Museum, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
2006 Ingrained Passion, Function + Art Gallery, Chicago, IL
Sitka Art Invitational, World Forestry Center, Portland, OR
Timere Vacui, Beppu-Wiarda Gallery, Portland, OR
2005 Contain, Solo Exhibition, University of Portland, Portland, OR
Scratching the Surface: Art and Content in Contemporary Wood, Mobilia Gallery,
Cambridge, MA
NuArt 05: Juror’s Choice, Anacortes Arts Festival, Anacortes, WA
Craft Biennial: A Biennial Review of NW Art & Craft, Hoffman Gallery, Portland, OR
Birds of a Feather, Beppu Gallery, Pacific City, OR
2004 Artist in Residency Show, Hoffman Gallery, Portland, OR
2003 Putting the Pieces Together, Solo Exhibition, Talisman Gallery, Portland, OR
Michael de Forest Furniture & Objects, Solo Exhibition, Talisman Gallery, Portland, OR
Contented: Contemporary Furniture and Wood Artists, Diamond Tanita Gallery,
Portland, OR
Turned Multiples III, Touring
Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, PA
Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO
2002 All Nudes Review, Beppu Gallery, Pacific City, OR
Fables and Chairs II, Solo Exhibition, Cabell Center, Portland, OR
2001 Fables and Chairs, Solo Exhibition, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR
2000 Wood Works, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR
1999 2.3.5…, Collaborative Installations, Contemporary Crafts Gallery, Portland, OR
1998 Dumb and Evil, Calhoun Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
1996 The Next Generation, Meredith Gallery, Baltimore, MD
1995 ArtQuake, Best Design, Portland, OR
1992 Art Quake, Best of Show, Portland, OR
Grand Prix des Metiers d’Arts, Montreal, Quebec
1988 Form/Function/Furniture II, NW Gallery of Fine Woodworking, Seattle, WA
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2008 Fine Woodworking Magazine, July/August, Issue 199, pp 81. “Rediscovering Milk Paint.”
Portland Business Journal. Winter, pp 22-23. Crafty Collectors.
2006 Oregon Art Beat. April 13, Episode 723. Oregon Public Broadcasting.
2005 American Style Magazine. August. Pp 37. “The Crow.”
2004 500 Wood Bowls: Bold & Original Designs Blending Tradition & Innovation. Leier, Ray;
Peters, Jan & Wallace, Kevin. Lark Books, Sterling Publications, New York, NY.
American Crafts Magazine. Feb/Mar. Pp 80. “Suture Series: The Rat Bowl-Survival and
Adaptability,” Oregon Home. Sept/Oct. Pp 19. “Pieces with Personas.”
2002 Scratching The Surface. Hosaluk, Michael. North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Hot Tea! 2009
The images on these teapots come from my interest in 40's, 50's, 60's black and white photography and more specifically photo-journalism. My parents were in the newspaper business when I was growing up. My Dad worked for a daily paper in Denver for a number of years in the fifties and later they both worked for and ran a small weekly newspaper in the suburbs of Denver. The daily paper was housed in a cavernous, dark hulk of a mid-century building. My father's desk was one of many in a large, high ceiling room close enough to the massive two story print room that the roar of the machines and smell of the ink filled every crack and crevice. This mix of modern gothic space and gritty, loud machinery added a sense of no-nonsense, tough in-your-face kind of character to my perception of what journalism and the photographic images associated with it were all about.
Both of my parents took black and white photos of local high school sports events; social affairs; and significant crimes, accidents, and political proceedings. At times these photos caught people at their most vulnerable. This element of candid vulnerability combined with the high visual contrast of the black and white medium of the photography has always intrigued me. The capturing of a moment and in a medium that reeks of reality, but is so obviously, because of its lack of color, only a representation, interests me as an artist who deals in figurative imagery and usually in bold, though non-representational color.
Years ago I learned about a New York photographer for The Daily News and The Daily Mirror, Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 - December 26, 1968), who went by the pseudonym WeeGee. His photos were usually shot at night and included murder victims and suspects; street people and socialites; strippers, transvestites, prostitutes, and crowd scenes. His work embodies the reality of urban capriciousness and pathos and therefore the capture of vulnerability that interests me. In researching his photos and subsequent books I came across a collection of a century of police mug shots. I chose two of them to carve and paint on the sides of the tea pot. This body of photos is poignant for the window it provides into the subjects' guilt, defiance, embarrassment, obliviousness, anger, hurt, boredom, cockiness, or just plain resignation. But most of all they portray a vulnerability due to the lack of control of their situation. I have tried to capture some of all of this in my renderings of two mug shots of the characters on either side of the "This Is My Handle, This Is My Spout".
The body of the teapots came from a constructive method of creating form from individual, discrete pieces made somewhat at random. I sculpted a female torso in clay in order to create the irregularly curved molds to bend the wood that would eventually be sewn into vessels, such as the teapots. The torso surface was arbitrarily divided into sections by spreading paper over the surface following the compound curves until the paper either started to fold or tear. This represented the largest area that veneer would bend before buckling or splitting. Each piece of paper was then cut and taped to the sculpture. Then paper was spread out next to it, and the next, etc., until the entire sculpture was covered with 137 pieces of paper. I cut into the sculpture wherever two pieces of paper touched and created a border. 1” wide waxed paper strips were put into the slots that the cuts created to fashion dams for plaster molds. Once the sculpture was covered with plaster the surface was ground down until the paper strips were revealed. Wooden wedges were pounded between pieces to loosen up each section of plaster and remove them. Tape was put around the edges of the negative plaster molds forming dams to receive reinforced polyurethane to create positive molds. Three pieces of glued veneer are then placed on these positive molds which then go into a vacuum press to bend the wood to the molds. These pieces are then trimmed, assembled temporarily to configure a container or vessel, drilled, carved, painted, and sewn together. Each teapot body is made from interconnecting two sections of the torso’s left leg.