This interview is published in collaboration with Glass Breakfast. Glass Breakfast is an ongoing, online archive project serving as an alternative space for the appreciation and conversation of art.
Glass Breakfast is a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Forrest Hudes (they/he) is a craftsperson, artist, and designer focused on participating in the making of meaning with wood in the contemporary world. Forrest is also the Founder of Bigwood Sporting Goods, known for the world’s first hollow core wooden pickleball paddle. Forrest currently lives in Conway, MA and works as the Prototyping Studio Manager at the Design Thinking Initiative at Smith College.
Below, Ian Carstons interviews Forrest on what it means to be an artist, the implications of working with wood as a living material, and making beautiful pickleball paddles. This interview was filmed in Hamtramck, Michigan.
About the author: Ian Carstens (he/him) is a filmmaker, writer and curator from the occupied land of the Otoe-Missouria, Sioux, Ioway, Sauk and Fox, known also as the Mississippi River Basin. His work explores temporality, non-human aliveness, multiplicity, as well as critiques of the archive, lens-based art forms and cultural institutions. He received his BA in Art Theory and Criticism from Luther College and teaches filmmaking at DMACC.
Carstens is the lead curator/filmmaker of Glass Breakfast, an ongoing archival project. His work has been exhibited with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the MSU Broad Art Museum, various festivals and on public television. His arts writing has been published with The Oxford American, Burnaway, Sugarcane, The Pulp, Ruckus Journal, Fugue Literary Journal, Sixty Inches From Center and others. He is the recipient of grants from the Columbus Museum of Art & Design, the Columbus Area Arts Council, Bloomington Arts Commission, and Iowa Arts Council, as well as being selected participant of the 2023 Tanda program with Chuquimarca.
