Exclusive interview with Forest Rogers, 1st Prize Winner, Yasha Young Projects Sculpture Award in the 2025 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize written by Bella Harris
Some artworks ask to be looked at; Forest Rogers’ sculptures ask to be met. Her winning work for the 2025 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize doesn’t simply exist in a single space, it arrives there like an old friend with a quiet history. Every curve and gesture carries a sense of character, a feeling that these figures were already alive long before we encountered them. Kissed by the whimsical and handled with care, do not be mistaken… these beings are never fragile in spirit.
Each sculpture lets us imagine a layered history… an origin and also the destination. Forest’s work is not an invitation in the conventional sense, because the stories are not simply told to us – they emerge through us. This is what makes them so fascinating. It doesn’t ask for attention, it embraces it, first belonging to figure’s presence, and then to our imagination.
From the spark of an idea to the moment a sculpture stands before us, Forest Rogers shapes her vision with her hands in a way that encourages our own hands to follow. Each piece evolves beneath her touch into tangible, fantastical guardian-like creatures, spirits, and memories that we can actually hold and feel. In this conversation, we explore the intention and quiet magic behind Forest’s award-winning work, and the fables that continue to live far beyond the form itself.
Exclusive Interview with Forest Rogers
Your ethereal figures feel as if they exist in a moment of fragile, suspended movement between here and ‘the other’. How do you locate find and then render that liminal space – that moment in time when your creative secret is whispered (and your creatures) take flight?
Excellent question that I’m not sure I can answer properly. It seems very important not to over-control the idea, to let it evolve. To capture it for a moment as it flies. I need to hold the reins loosely, and let the idea talk back to me. Allow it to change my plans, even as I labor over it. If things are going well, it really does whisper to me — well, at least metaphorically! And then somehow one can dwell in that liminal space for a little while, and perform the necessary and sometimes maddening work of manifesting something that is always a little bit beyond reach.
“When I was a child, my mother created a mask she called “Death Mask of the Sun.” I still have it. It’s a kind of sun-face with rays emerging from the top of the head, while the bottom half of the face is a starry night. Wonderful, simple concept! At a certain point in the creation of Winter Siren, that mask clarified for me what my piece was about.”
Japanese air-dry clay, mulberry paper, wood, armature wire, acyrlic paints & ink, 21 x 5 x 5 in.
Regarding your award-winning piece, Winter Siren that you described as “roosts in the far north, deep in the wildwood, awaiting the return of the Sun.” This suggests a deeper, almost liturgical reading of the seasons. Who is Winter Siren? Did your process involve a seasonal meditation or ritual to capture the spirit of both finality and hopeful anticipation?
When I was a child, my mother created a mask she called “Death Mask of the Sun.” I still have it. It’s a kind of sun-face with rays emerging from the top of the head, while the bottom half of the face is a starry night. Wonderful, simple concept! At a certain point in the creation of Winter Siren, that mask clarified for me what my piece was about. I realized it was a sun half-mask that this siren wanted, and that she was waiting, in some secret northern wood, for the return of light.
For the fiery face of life to peep over the horizon again, as it has always done. Of course, the symbolism of that moment and that cyclical hope has been with us since we began, and it carries many metaphors within it. I’m sitting now in the early dark, with a cup of hot tea, near my midwinter tree with its fairy lights and its eclectic, glimmering ornaments. It is easy to feel a great cycle of light and starry darkness revolving around this fleeting nest.
Your works are complete narratives that loudly invite us to wander into their whimsical fairy tale… but they are also silent. If you could give a single sound (like a gentle breeze, a faint heartbeat, twinkling stars) what would that sound be and how does it resonate into your sculptures?
Oh, that’s a wonderful question that no one has asked before. Also, a hard one to answer! Likely each piece would want its own sound. This Winter Siren might carry the fragile sound of ice on frozen branches, for which the right word eludes me. The Morrigan could be the gale howling over a battlefield, snapping the battle flags. Abyssal beings may hear the whales sing, while fauns carry the rustle of leaves.
How do everyday, real-world observations and inspirations transition into the surreal, mythological beings you create?
I think one is continuously gathering images and intriguing scraps, shapes and patterns, meanings. But I picture a whale filtering with its baleen as it swims, retaining the usable, releasing what isn’t relevant, all without direct conscious effort. When it comes time to create, I find I need to move to the inner space and block out the pressures and worries of this world. Sometimes that’s extremely difficult. But I must transfer attention to the internal realm enough that there is some question which is really the “real” world. Is it the clamor and demand of the mundane? Or is it a luminous domain entirely beyond the reach of those daily battles?
“When approaching the idea, myth or archetype, I try to be a good listener, as it were. I try to perceive what seems most essential in it, at least to me at that moment. Then I throw my darts as close to that bullseye as possible.”
Many of your sculptures possess a quality that feels hinged on the edge of melancholy. Is this sentiment essential to the beauty and truth of your fantastical subjects?
Sadness comes in so many flavors. Obviously, our world is shot through with things that pain and change us. I find my losses and afflictions play vital roles in what I hope is an evolution of spirit and vision, though when they strike, they may feel only catastrophic. They require a kind of alchemical processing, sometimes over many years. Perhaps my work is part of that process. What are the uses of sorrow — that has been a lifelong contemplation. It’s something we all share, of course, and perhaps to be true the work needs the shadow and the brightness entwined.
How do you ensure the deep-seated emotionality that resonates so intensely with your viewers? And what was the last, most crucial gesture or detail you added to one of your creations to seal its emotional truth?
Well, I wouldn’t dare say that I can ensure what resonates! Rather, I’m extremely fortunate when resonance emerges from the conversation between myself and the idea, and afterward, in the unguessable interaction between image and viewer. I can only hope to raise the odds. When approaching the idea, myth or archetype, I try to be a good listener, as it were. I try to perceive what seems most essential in it, at least to me at that moment. Then I throw my darts as close to that bullseye as possible.
Regarding a last crucial detail added to a piece, the Winter Siren is a good example. Originally, she was going to hold a snowy owl mask. I still like that thought, but quite near the end of the making, the idea of the sun mask came home to me in the middle of the night, and it proved to be the right choice in the moment. The Owl will land another day!
If your work was a beacon for future generations, what unconventional wisdom about the artistic life would you want them to know?
Goodness, a beacon is hard to envision, though there have certainly been art-beacons for me. A very early one was Kay Nielsen’s East of the Sun, West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North, as I’ve mentioned before. Those illustrations transported me before I could read, and are with me still. But let’s call my work another knot in our tremendous shared fishing net. What we catch, we somehow catch together, we artists and beholders who respond. The links and connections and echoes are beyond tracing, and must lead us back all the way to those magnificent great animals on the walls of caves.
Here, I think I’ll hand the end over to one of my all-time favorite quotes:
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and (it) will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly — to keep the channel open.” – Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer, 1894 – 1991
And a few about the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize…
Why did you enter the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize?
Beautiful Bizarre Magazine introduces me to artists I love, both in the magazine itself and on Instagram. It’s a vitalizing, inspiring presence in the world I inhabit with my work, and of course I want to participate! Beautiful Bizarre also curates some fabulous gallery shows. It helps our shared realm flourish.
What do you feel you have gained from this experience?
An exciting competition can help me focus. It adds a particular kind of energy to the completion of a piece. Being part of something that brings together really amazing works — that is special. Art can be a very solitary thing, and participating with Beautiful Bizarre is enlivening. And yes, it’s mighty fine to have won, of course! The generous, artistically thoughtful prizes are fantastic icing on the cake. Thank you!
Would you recommend it and encourage others to enter? If so, why?
It’s a wonderful chance to be part of an extraordinary gathering of art and artists, and to support Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, one of the most intriguing and active entities in our field. Also, the creators and staff of Beautiful Bizarre have been kind, patient and inclusive, and it’s a world worth joining. Here’s hoping it will continue to grow, and that artists considering entry will take that step. I want my socks knocked off!