Peacock Chair
by Forrest Hudes · Hamtramck, United States

I am a craftsperson, artist, and designer focused on participating in the making of meaning with wood in the contemporary world.To me, wood represents the potentials of the body. By shaping it, I can change, undermine, reverse, and expand those possibilities. My work operates as a site of inquiry into the complex and fluid nature of queer identity, wherein the tension between internal and external realities becomes palpable.My early life and education was in the performing arts, and from that place I approach my craft practice with an idiosyncratic methodology, one that privileges intuition and responsiveness over the rigidity of planful construction. In doing so, I seek to destabilize the linearity and planarity inherent in traditional woodworking techniques.My practice centers the tension between inner and outer, that which is felt and that which is perceived, that which is expected and that which is yearned for - and especially the limitations of matter, the constraints of material, and the edges which you can push that up against. I make functional and dysfunctional objects out of wood to this end. While being highly recognizable, my objects also deviate from expectations in ways that imbue the familiar with newness.