The Alchemy of Imagination

To step into Forest Rogers’ world is to abandon certainty. Her sculptures whisper of forgotten myths, creatures caught between worlds, the delicate shiver of something both wondrous and unsettling. They do not simply exist; they hover on the precipice of motion, as if at any moment they might stretch, breathe, and vanish into the mists from which they came.

Rogers, an artist of unparalleled vision, has built a universe where polymer clay and epoxy transcend their earthly properties. Each figure—be it an Octopoid descending through darkness, a fae messenger heralding unseen tidings, or a spectral being wrapped in the tattered remnants of time—is imbued with a sense of kinetic poetry.

The Creatures of Ether and Bone

Octopoid Descending – A Dark Elegance

Winner of the Chesley Award for Best Three-Dimensional Work, Octopoid Descending is both haunting and hypnotic. A hybrid of cephalopod and something eerily human, its sinuous tentacles and fluid form create a sense of perpetual movement. Rogers does not sculpt static figures; she sculpts potential—potential for transformation, for chaos, for revelation.

The Beautiful Crustacean – The Grace of the Impossible

Appearing in The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That is Unreal, The Beautiful Crustacean embodies Rogers’ ability to merge the delicate with the monstrous. Her creatures exist in a liminal space—part nightmare, part dream, always breathtaking.

Passion in Form – The Pulse Beneath the Surface

Sculpture is more than material; it is motion trapped in time. Rogers harnesses that energy with exquisite precision. A warrior figure, wrapped in the debris of some unseen battle, flings herself forward, driven by an almost feral determination. The ragged edges of fabric, the chaotic sweep of limbs, the streak of blood-red—these elements are not placed, they are felt.

The Discipline of the Fantastic

Rogers’ work is meticulous. Every inch, every microscopic texture, is intentional. It is this dedication to detail that makes her sculptures more than objects—they are narratives, waiting to be unraveled. The gradation of colors in a mermaid’s tail, the intricate scaling of a mythical beast, the barely perceptible shift in expression on a fae’s face—each choice deepens the illusion, the magic.

There is a lesson here: fantasy is not an escape, it is an excavation. The best of it—Rogers’ work included—does not remove us from reality but sharpens our ability to see its beauty, its horror, its infinite potential.

Forest Rogers does not simply create sculptures. She conjures beings, breathes life into the impossible, and reminds us that the line between myth and reality is thinner than we think.