Forrest Sincoff Gard

“At some point as we get older, we are made to feel guilty for playing. We are told that it is unproductive, a waste of time, even sinful. The play that remains is, like league sports, mostly very organized, rigid, and competitive. We strive to always be productive, and if an activity doesn’t teach us a skill, make us money, or get on the boss’s good side, then we feel we should not be doing it. Sometimes the sheer demands of daily living seem to rob us of the ability to play.”

-Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute of Play

Legally, I have been an adult for almost two decades. During that time I have experienced (more than once) the feeling of having too many tasks and not enough hours in the day to accomplish them. When this happens, a switch inside of me is flipped and I am unable to have fun; I stop playing and I usually become depressed. As Brown asserts, our culture actually makes us feel guilty for the times we are not being productive. As children we are encouraged to play, our parents arrange play dates, and we develop physically and emotionally through play. I am interested in the carry over from child’s play to adult play and am curious why some adults stop playing while others continue. My interactive installations aim at providing gallery visitors (the majority of which are grownups) the feeling of being able to play. This shift in the traditional gallery experience allows the viewer to interact with a ceramic object in a new way. My work allows people an opportunity to briefly escape their grown-up realities; a feeling that is often foreign to many adults in today’s overly competitive culture.

Forrest Sincoff Gard earned his BFA from Ohio University, completed post-baccalaureate studies at the University of Florida, and received his MFA from Louisiana State University. He has shown his ceramic art and interactive installations in exhibitions across the United States, Europe, and South Korea. Forrest taught ceramics in Italy as part of the University of Georgia’s Cortona program and more recently at the University of North Georgia. He was awarded the NCECA International Residency at ASP in Wroclaw, Poland, as well as residencies at Red Lodge Clay Center and Mill Hill Community Arts Center. Currently, Forrest is a resident artist and ceramics instructor at Harvard.