We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Forrest Greenslade. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Forrest below.
Forrest, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
How I became an artist is a weird story. I had spent my working life as a biologist and organizational executive. My last “real job” was President of an international women’s health organization. My retirement plan was to be a speaker and management consultant. I wrote a leadership book, “The Simple-Minded Manager Cutting Through Your Work Life Chaos”. Things were going well when I had a massive heart attack. The riggers of a speaking business was no longer a viable option for me.. During my recovery, my wife dragged me to a tour of local artist studios. I was so impressed by how satisfied the artists were with their lives. We came back home for lunch. My wife likes gardening and design shows and turned on the TV. Martha Stewart was making a garden pot with peat moss and cement. I didn’t even finish my sandwich. I went out to the potting shed and made a funny face from peat moss and cement. I held it up, looked at it and was hooked. I sent a photo of it to a friend who had started a small art gallery. She said, “I love this and if you make them I will sell them,”
I am now a member of the Artist Guild that each December holds the studio tour.
Forrest, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
NATURE INSPIRED SCULPTURE and PAINTINGS
“I was that kid you could always find turning over rocks in streams, looking for what wonders nature would disclose to me. This curiosity about the natural world led me to a serious life as scientist and organizational executive. Now in retirement, I am again doing what I did in grammar school — turning over rocks and sculpting and painting the wonders that nature discloses.”
My sculpture and paintings have been on display at shows and galleries throughout the region. I participate each year in the North Carolina Botanical Garden Sculpture in the Garden show. This year, my assemblage “Frogue Magazine’s Best Dressed in 2022” won Honorable Mention out of 77 entries.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I was born in 1939 in a small town in upstate New York. By that time, the territory of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, which before 1800 had ranged from Texas to South Carolina, had been reduced to a tract of land in Louisiana. The demand for lumber in the US after the Civil War had stripped the South of its vast woodlands. The need for boxes to support the effort in World War II then caused the destruction of those woods in Louisiana. That year, A Cornell University PhD student, working with the National Audubon Society, reported that there might be only 25 Ivory Bills alive in the US, mostly in that Louisiana tract, and only one mating pair. The last recorded sighting of an Ivory Bill was in 1944. I was in grammar school. We had a Junior Audubon Club in our school – I was an enthusiastic member. What I remember most in the little magazine that we received, was J. J. Audubon’s iconic painting of a family of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers. He had painted it in the 1820s, and published it in 1831 in Birds of America. Back then, the Ivory Bill was known by many colloquial names: The Van Dyke, White Back, Pate, Tit-Ka. Audubon noted, that because of the size and beauty of the Ivory Bill, many folks exclaimed “Lord God, what a bird”.
Audubon and the Junior Audubon Club had a lasting impact on my entire life. I was lucky to study biology in high school, college and graduate school, which takes me to another encounter with the Lord God Bird. In the early 1960s, I went to New Orleans to attend graduate school at Tulane University. Our library had an original elephant folio copy of Audubon’s Birds of America. We were actually allowed to touch this precious book. I luxuriated in leafing through Audubon’s wood cut prints, and again the Ivory Billed Woodpecker painting was my favorite. I was taking a program in Biological Sciences. This required courses ranging from Botany to Molecular Biology and Natural History. In an Avian Biology course, we went on a field trip to a swampy woodland about an hour from New Orleans. Deep in this wild place, we all swore that we caught a glimpse of an Ivory Bill.
There had been a lot of rumors of Ivory Bill sightings all around the country. Most experts dismissed these observations as mistaking the slightly smaller and common Piliated Woodpecker for the Ivory Bill. Did we make the same mistake? Probably – but this experience is a memory that I have cherished for a lifetime.
My curiosity about the natural world, led me to a life as scientist and organizational executive. Now in retirement, I am exploring my more creative side.
In 2002, a six-person international team searched the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in Louisiana. They found some signs of Ivory Bills but no birds. In the last couple of years, there were purported sightings in Arkansas and Florida. Is the Ivory Billed Woodpecker extinct? Likely – But if not extinct, the Lord God Bird is in its twilight.
My painting is my wish that this magnificent bird has a little more time.
I posted my painting on my Facebook page. The Tulane Biology Department requested permission to post it on their FB page. The image and story was circulated broadly over the internet.
One day, we received an email from the Education Director of the national Audubon Society. She wanted to interview my wife and me about the impact on our lives of the Junior Audubon Society. We had several lovely phone conversations and she invited us to visit the home office in J.J. Audubon’s first home in Pennsylvania. It turns out that it is about 45 minutes from our daughter’s family. We all went and had a personal tour of the home and grounds. I brought her a framed print of my painting.
Since them, I have shown a bird painting in an art show at the Audubon Home Gallery and I keep up with my Audubon friend on Facebook.
The Lord God Bird has in many ways captured my entire life’s story.
Notes: Historical information was taken from Phillip Hoose’s excellent book, The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, Melanie Kroupa Books, 2004, New York. To my knowledge, there are no colored photographs of the Ivory Bill. I used J. J. Audubon’s painting, which he did from dead field specimens, to guide my selection of colors. After this painting was posted on Facebook, we were contacted by the Education Director at the Audubon Society, interested in the effect that the Junior Audubon Club had on people’s lives and careers. After several conversations, we visited the headquarters in the home of J.J. Audubon in Pennsylvania. I brought the Director a print of this painting.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I have leaned that people don’t buy art. They buy a piece of the artist. Accordingly, I pay close attention to sharing my own life story with people in person and in media. i draw attention to the confluent of my life as a scientist and my nature-inspired painting and sculpture. My art explores the intersection of science, art and mythology. After all, mythology was ancient people explaining their natural world and so is modern science. Art draws 0n both. My life experience and my art are the same.
Contact Info:
- Website: organicforrestry.com
- Instagram: organicforrestry
- Facebook: Forrest Greenslade
- Youtube: Forrest Greenslade
- Other: https://chathamartistsguild.org/artists/forrest-greenslade/
Image Credits
All photos by me