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The News & Observer
Home & Garden
who&where A look at artisans and their creations
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Reprinted with permission by author Diane Daniel
It's art, for peat's sake!
Humor and whimsy
shape sculptor's
'priceless tchotchkes'
By Diane Daniel
Correspondent
FEARRINGTON VILLAGE -- Forrest Greenslade clearly can't resist
a good -- or sometimes delightfully bad -- wordplay. It starts with
the name Forrest Dwellers, the artist’s large collection of
gnome-like outdoor sculptures, many of them animals. Then it gets
worse. Among his pigs, there has to be a "Venus de Porco,"
right? Two penguin figures are called “Aunt Artica” and “Gil
Lapagos.” And when Greenslade added a new line of sculptures built
into wooden poles, that became his “post-modern” work.
This is what happens when a scientist proclaims himself "NC's
foremost tchotchkeist," maker of "priceless tchotchkes,"
the Yiddish word for trinket. His claim seems pretty accurate.
Visiting the Fearrington home Greenslade shares with Carol-Ann, his
wife of 40 years, is like stopping by an enchanted garden. Everywhere
you look, inside and out, little eyes peer out at you from
funny, squat faces.
"We're one tchotchke away from being driven out of the
neighborhood," jokes Carol-Ann, a real-estate agent. Truth is,
the neighbors seem as taken by the Dwellers as Greenslade's customers
have been.
Greenslade, 64, didn't set out to be a tchotchkeist. He, Carol-Ann,
63, and their daughter spent most of their family life in New Jersey,
where the Ph.D.-holding molecular biologist-turned clinical
researcher-turned manager worked first in the pharmaceutical industry
and then in world public health. He and Carol-Ann moved south in 1990,
when he took the position of president at Ipas, an international
women’s health organization in Chapel Hill.
After retiring in 1999, Greenslade’s plan was to do “writing and
consulting and the like.” In 2000, he published the management book
“The Simple-Minded Manager: Cutting Through Your Work-Life Chaos,”
and took his philosophies on the road, addressing executives using the
public speaking skills that won him honors over the years in
Toastmasters International.
In the fall of 2001, Carol-Ann invited her husband to join her on the
Chatham Studio Tour. Or, as he recalled, “she took me, kicking and
screaming.” The final artist studio they visited was that of
Fearrington Village neighbor Zen Palkoski, creator of “Wood
Spirits,” nymph-like carvings set in wood.
“I came home with the image of Zen’s things on my mind,”
Greenslade.
And then he heard a voice -- that of Martha Stewart. He’d turned on
the television and there was the home-and-garden maven demonstrating
how to make garden troughs from cement and peat moss.
Greenslade went straight to the potting shed to try it out, but
couldn‘t figure out how to create a structure for building forms and
faces. He called his daughter, Kathryn Armstrong, 38, a trained artist
living in Pennsylvania.
“You need chicken wire,” she advised. “Twenty minutes later I
was hooked,” said Greenslade, whose first creation, a
primitive-looking face, still hangs outside.
Since that fateful day, Greenslade has charged forward into the art
world with the same drive he has put into science, business, and
publishing. He’s now on the board of directors of ChathamArts, is a
member of the Orange County Artists Guild, sells his work at several
area stores and from his Web site, has taken several sculpting and art
classes, and has expanded his offerings greatly -- moving beyond the
“tchotchke” label -- and now enjoys doing commission work.
His newest lines are “Stumpies” faces and figures applied to short
pieces of wood, and “House-broken Forrest Dwellers,” small indoor
creatures made of Sculpey, a brand of polymer clay. Faces set into
ragged pieces of wood, gifts dropped from last year’s ice storm, are
each labeled “Member of a Splinter Group.”
The change in Greenslade’s profession has amused some of his science
friends. One friend, after receiving a Christmas card featuring
“Yule Log” Stumpies, e-mailed his college buddy to say “Greenie,
you’ve wigged out.”
The Greenslades are active and accomplished gardeners, and have
created perfect settings on their 1.2 acres for the artist’s
menagerie. Frog dwellers hang out (and up) around the couple’s pond,
home to several fish, including the oversized “Moby Catfish.”
Water for the pond flows from “Mouth of the River,” a large
frog head with its mouth open.
The couple welcomes visitors to the home gallery, and Greenslade loves
to explain how each piece is made. Most sculptures still contain the
Portland cement and peat mix that Stewart advised, along with some
structure, be it chicken wire, copper wire, Styrofoam, or rags. When
the mixture is wet like clay, Greenslade builds up the shapes, adding
details with a sharpened chopstick. Atop that he adds acrylic sealers,
and some pieces are then brushed with a bronze patina. Greenslade
recently has painted some pieces bright colors, but most of his work
has a more organic, woodsy look.
Forrest Dwellers dot the country, but one of the largest collection
resides nearby, improbably in tony Governors Club in Chapel Hill,
where they are strategically placed so as not to be seen by the
neighbors.
Judy Barton, a collector of bronze sculpture, with an emphasis on
wildlife, met Greenslade when she commissioned him to build a rock
sculpture to be the base for a bronze sculpture.
“The art I have is serious,“ Barton said. But after laying eyes on
the Forrest Dwellers, she said, “I decided I wanted to have some
things that you just look at and laugh.”
She calls Greenslade’s work “four-dimensional. He has these wacko
names that he gives these things.” One of her four pieces is called
“E. Reptile Disfunkshun,” a name she said amuses mostly women.
She also is the owner of “Venus de Porco.”
As for Greenslade’s future aspirations, one of his occupational
hazards is his Type-A personality, he said. “I was even getting
obsessed with my sculptures,“ he said.
Two heart attacks, one in 2001 and another on New Year’s Day this
year altered his outlook. “I slowed down. I don’t do as many
shows. Now I’m just enjoying the process.”
One reason he likes for people to come to his home gallery is so he
can cut back on shows, he said. And then there’s the fun factor.
“When people come, we try to make a party of it.”
Despite the geographical distance from his daughter, Greenslade and
Armstrong (she has a degree from the renowned Parsons School of Design
in New York City), collaborate often, and sell each other’s wares at
shows and online. They share a mutual interest in art and nature, and
both enjoy it with a wry humor.
When the Greenslades visited Armstrong and her husband recently,
father and daughter spent all weekend creating a series of comical cow
heads. “We made ‘Picowsos’ and were talking about a ‘Moodigliani.’
,” Greenslade said, clearly pleased with their udder nonsense.
Artisan at a Glance
Name: Forrest Greenslade
Wares: Forrest Dwellers garden sculptures
Location: Fearrington Village
Contact: 919-545-9743, www.forrestgreenslade.com
Prices: Wall or tree hangings, $20-$100; cedar stumpies and
rock heads, $30-$150; larger sculptures, $250-$500
Where to buy: Greenslade's home gallery by appointment and on
his Web site; and in Chapel Hill at Carolina Waterscapes and
Glazed Expectations; in Fearrington Village at the The Potting Shed;
in Pittsboro at ChathamArts and The General Store Cafe; and in Siler
City at the NC Arts Incubator Gallery. Greenslade also will be at Arts
at the Meadow, an outdoor juried fine art and craft show on Sept. 11,
from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Meadowmont Village in Chapel Hill.
Send suggestions for Who & Ware to Diane Daniel, The News &
Observer, 112 S. Duke St., Suit 4, Durham, NC 27701, or e-mail her at whoandware@newsobserver.com
Diane Daniel can also be reached at didaniel@aol.com.
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