Interview with Forrest Hudes
January 2022
“I realized that ultimately we are made by our environment just as we make our environment. And so as a designer I am responsible not just for the thing I make but for how that thing shapes the people who use it.” - Forrest Hudes
IMWG:
In your practice you focus on the idea of the emotional impact of objects and our environments. When/how did you first become aware of the emotional impact of our environments and the objects within? How did this influence you as an artist and designer?
FH:
I started making furniture (objects) about ten years ago just for myself. I needed a desk and then I needed a bed etc. and it made sense to me to make my own. I wanted to make good things that did what they were supposed to do - that was my mindset and that is what I needed at the time. But as my skills and practice evolved that started to feel limiting and I wasn’t exactly sure why.
Then I stumbled upon Sara Ahmed’s book Queer Phenomenology and reading that book for the first time, something clicked for me about what was missing from my practice up to that point. I got really obsessed with the idea of not just what something was for, or how good it was at doing that, but what quality it lent to that experience. That book made clear to me that I may be making a chair, but the chair in turn also makes things, makes us. The chair makes emotional possibilities. I realized that ultimately we are made by our environment just as we make our environment. And so as a designer I am responsible not just for the thing I make but for how that thing shapes the people who use it. Does this chair make the person who sits in it more empathetic? More able to be vulnerable? More curious? More open to change? What conversation does sitting in this chair enable that sitting in any other chair would not? This interested me so much more than utility or aesthetics, and in this way making things became about making the infrastructure for experiences.
IMWG:
You are a second-generation woodworker and you have a background in theater and dance, how have these influenced your design practice? What similarities and differences exist between these two worlds?
FH:
I really did grow up between these two worlds of job sites and dressing rooms. A lot of my most vivid childhood memories are either of piles of sawdust or vanity mirrors. I think one of the major ways that this has impacted my creative work is that these are both backstage environments. I was always behind the scenes in the part you aren’t supposed to see, where the illusion is built. I think of seeing inside a wall of a house as peeking backstage. And so these are the spaces I am most fascinated by and I just don’t really believe in there being a hard separation between frontstage and backstage. I always liked theater that didn’t have a solid fourth wall the best, and I was always more fascinated by buildings as they were under construction. I think growing up behind the scenes means that my imagination comes from behind the scenes. So I like seeing the thing undone by itself, or the self-aware object. And part of the challenge that I’m interested in engaging with in objects is creating something that isn’t suggesting a full illusion. Something that nods to its own existence. To me that quality makes it honest, forthright in a way.
In terms of the similarities and differences between theater and design, I think growing up they felt completely separate to me. There was a seriousness and precision and exactitude to woodworking - a real right way and wrong way quality - and a lot of rules and hard skills. Whereas being in the theater felt like play and expression and freedom and imagination. What is really fun for me now is finding how these things overlap and even flip in the work I do - how the most exacting precision can become a form of freedom, and how expression can take a lot of hard skill to achieve.
IMWG:
What do you find lacking in traditional objects and environments? How do you seek to remedy this through your work?
FH:
This makes me think of a word that is UBIQUITOUS in the western design world that drives me nuts, which is the word ‘clean’. I think so much of traditional design is geared toward a sort of cleanness and efficiency that suggests finality and rightness, as if the thing that is made is natural and unquestionable. I cannot understand this because I live in a world that is not clean and is complicated and always unfinished. To plop down a “clean”, very certain object into that world is like showing up in a tuxedo to a picnic. I’m like who are you kidding? For me, life is messy and strange and wonderful and unique and ever-changing. I like looking out onto a world full of things that are like that too so I don’t feel out of place.
I am always searching for this quality in the things that I make that feels un-final, fluid, changeable. I think there is a type of vulnerability in something that is soft and mutable - and I think that vulnerability in our landscape can help enable us to soften too and not need to exude a sort of permanence and certainty ourselves.
I think in the work it is a fine balance to navigate. I am not interested in sloppiness, I have a high regard for craft and the well made object that is meant to last. But I am equally disinterested in something that is “perfect” or “right”. I try to make things that evince this sense of still becoming, and also this sense that the thing itself is only one equally valid possibility of many.
“For me, life is messy and strange and wonderful and unique and ever-changing. I like looking out onto a world full of things that are like that too so I don’t feel out of place.” - Forrest Hudes
IMWG:
What is the role of materials and craft techniques in defining the objects?
FH:
This is a question I am really regularly checking in with myself about and my answers keep changing. I think it is a central question in my studio and each piece I make is a sort of temporary answer. For now I can say I work mostly in solid wood, and I work in dialogue with the history of that material and the craft practices and histories associated with it. I also work against those practices and histories. The struggle between my respect for wood and the skills and techniques of working it, and a desire to reject tradition and discover new ways that aren’t embedded with the antiquated values those traditions are tied to - that struggle is central to what I am doing. Wood is an ancient material embedded with such deep cultural associations and expectations, and I love and revere wood as material, and I am driven by trying to find ways of working it that allow it to find new meaning.
IMWG:
What do you hope people discover when interacting with your work?
FH:
What I really hope is to reanimate these small moments in the day that have generally gone slack with the full possibility of being alive. For example, the magic of seeing oneself reflected in a mirrored surface is something I totally take for granted each day as I brush my teeth, it doesn’t even cross my mind. I hope with these mirrors I make, that act can once again be animated with the magic of being able to encounter oneself. I am just really interested in these disruptive things - things that mess up the neatness of narratives, throw a little wrench in the works - that sweet spot where something is familiar enough to recognize it, but odd enough that it doesn’t fit into the category that its supposed to and so pushes on the slackness of everyday experiences.
Ultimately why I really make these things is to be a reminder for me, and I hope for other people too, that the whole world that we live in of human made things is not a forgone conclusion. Everything was made, which means that it could have been made differently. This feels related to my behind the scenes childhood - I don’t think I ever saw the world as an assumption - and I think getting to see things that push on our assumptions helps us expand our vision for our lives.
