Forrest trained at Cranbrook Academy of Art and Alfred University and later built an influential academic career as Professor at NSCAD University and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and now Professor Emeritus. In his teaching practice, he shaped new generations of artists working at the intersections of craft, material inquiry, and spatial thinking. His teaching, symposium contributions, and cross-disciplinary research have significantly impacted the field, advancing ceramics as a medium capable of engaging with architecture, ecology, and contemporary political questions.
His early work was rooted in ornament and architectonic ceramic systems; large-scale assemblages and micro-structures that challenged traditional boundaries of function, form, and spatial occupation. These pieces explored biological morphologies, invented landscapes, and interconnected ceramic networks. Over time, his practice expanded toward installations that respond to specific historical, environmental, or anthropological contexts, often integrating narrative and conceptual threads.
Forrest frequently collaborates with other artists, architects, and scientists. Notably, as part of OortCloudX (a collaborative duo with artist John Roloff), he develops installations that examine origin stories, pop culture clashes, geological problematics, and material processes. Their recent exhibition, A ROADMAP TO STARDUST, held at the San Francisco Museum of Craft & Design in 2025, exemplifies an interdisciplinary exploration of matter, systems, and narrative. Forrest’s international profile includes participation in the Cheongju Biennale in Korea, a major commission for Overthrown at the Denver Art Museum, and solo exhibitions such as The Washingtonian Service (Washington, D.C.) and Hard Transits (RAM Galleri, Oslo).
He has received multiple Canada Council grants (including two Established Artist Grants) as well as support from Arts Nova Scotia and other agencies. His research project PORØS (Porous), funded by the Norwegian Artistic Research Council, engineered a narrative of chemical processes, evaporation, and crystalline growth within a suite of ceramic objects. Exhibited at the Nelson Museum of Art in Arizona, the project affirmed Forrest’s reputation as an artist who expands ceramics into the realms of scientific phenomena and environmental inquiry.
Forrest’s work operates across scales, from intimate objects to spatial installations, and across conceptual registers, weaving together personal, cultural, and scientific narratives. His practice examines how ceramic forms can hold and transmit knowledge, functioning as connectors between time periods, materials, and human experience. Each project reveals a deep engagement with both the physical properties of clay and the conceptual implications of material transformation.
Within The Power of Objects, Forrest’s work exemplifies how crafted forms can serve as systems of meaning and political discourse; objects that locate narrative within material, history, and spatial relations. His work underscores the exhibition’s vision that objects are active forces capable of shaping our understanding of identity, and collective memory. Through his expansive approach to ceramics, Forrest demonstrates how objects can offer new pathways for thinking, connecting, and imagining our place within larger cultural and geographical systems.
