Charles Howard Forrester (1928-2010) was a sculptor with a legacy of six decades of artwork. As a university professor for thirty years in England and Kentucky, with roots in New York and the Pacific Northwest, he directly impacted generations of sculptors and artists.

Charles Forrester was born in 1928 in Jersey City, NJ, shortly before the start of the Great Depression. Besides the widespread poverty faced by so many during that time period, Forrester’s family faced extreme hardship when his father, a bank accountant, served 3 years in prison for bank fraud. In 1932, his mother developed schizophrenia and spent her remaining years in a mental institution until her death decades later. Forrester’s older sister became his caretaker and maternal figure.

World War II raged through Forrester’s teenage years. In New York City where he lived, Jewish refugees from Europe flooded the same ports where soldiers shipped out and dead bodies were returned home from the war front. Rumors of concentration camps in Germany spread throughout the nation, although many Americans denied the news. At the same time, Japanese-Americans were rounded up and placed in camps. The scarcity of jobs forced millions to lose their homes to foreclosure, while they also faced starvation, especially in the cities. This tumultuous backdrop imprinted itself on Forrester during his youth and provided context to his later life and artwork.

After being discharged from the Air Force in 1949 and earning his high school diploma, Forrester attended City College in New York. Unfocused, he was adrift and uncertain about his future. He knew he was talented in art and passionate about drawing, but lacked confidence to explore it as a profession.

In 1951, his fortunes changed one night at a party in New York City when he met Dorothy Reese. She was twenty-seven, engaging and educated, and had already traveled around the world. Originally from Seattle, Reese had graduated from Barnard College in New York with a degree in political science. By 1951, she had returned from Europe after graduate study at the University of Zurich and the University of London. At twenty-two years old, Forrester was a handsome rebel. When Reese found out he had attended Communist Party meetings and subscribed to the Daily Worker, she was hooked. They married within weeks and their loving partnership lasted fifty-three years. She became Forrester’s muse and provided the support and encouragement he needed to explore his creativity.

Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Seattle, and Forrester went back to school and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1958. He studied sculpture under Everett DuPen (1912-2005), well known for his figurative sculptures. DuPen’s influence is evident in Forrester’s work from the abstract use of the human figure in his early massive concrete sculptures to the soft curves in wood sculptures created in his later years

In 1958, the family moved to Eugene, Oregon, where Forrester earned a Master of Fine Arts degree. He studied under the internationally known artist Jan Zach at the University of Oregon with fellow sculptors Arthur Jorgenson, Walter Hannula, and Phillip Levine. Zach’s influence can be seen in Forrester’s interest in geometric lines and non-objective abstract sculpture. Other early influences were the Russian sculptor, Naum Gabo, and Buckminster Fuller. Fuller’s geodesic domes inspired a generation of sculptors like Forrester and New York’s Kenneth Snelson with their kinetic sphere sculptures.

Early on in his career while still a graduate student, Forrester began gaining notoriety for his work. In 1959, Springfield’s Junior Chamber of Commerce commissioned him for a monument honoring Oregon’s one-hundredth year of statehood. The sculpture, known as The Equestrian, became one of his most famous outdoor works. Sixty years later, the twenty-five-foot-tall horse and rider sculpture still stands at the west entrance to Springfield, Oregon on Highway 126.

By 1961, the Forrester family lived in Ashland, Oregon, where Forrester immersed himself in the arts community. His commissions included busts of King Lear, Malvolio, and Shylock for Oregon’s Shakespearean Festival and several outdoor sculptures for the Medford Parks & Recreation Department.

The next year, restless and always looking for inspiration, he moved his family overseas to Florence, Italy. This move outside of the United States, became one of many over the years as they traveled to foreign countries where they would live for months or even years in cheap pensions. Ultimately, the Forrester’s traveled extensively across Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas for sabbaticals and residencies throughout their lifetimes.

In 1963, they moved to Manchester, England, where Charles served as a sculpture instructor at Salford Technical College (now known as the University of Salford). It was here that he worked with British sculptor, Mike Yeomans, in structural studies which inspired many of his wire and metal tube suspended sculptures.

Two years later, the family moved to Southern Kentucky, and Forrester became the first professor of sculpture at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in Bowling Green. When the Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center was built in 1973, Forrester designed the 4,000 square-foot sculpture facility with its state-of-the-art metal casting foundries for sand casting, lost wax, and ceramic shell processes. Forrester taught hundreds of students during his teaching career and was known for his tidy, well-designed studio where every tool had its place. His daily attire comprised all-black turtlenecks and pants, seemingly immune to the white plaster dust floating everywhere. He taught at WKU for the next twenty- seven years while maintaining a studio in Southern Kentucky where he created his own artwork and showed it in many galleries and exhibitions.

Forrester was an expert in many mediums, following his curiosity and love of experimenting. He was known for using Gestalt drawings for designing his sculptures, as well as modified Ouija boards for creative inspiration. His sculptures reflect his intellectual curiosity of metaphysics. While his large concrete outdoor sculptures are among his most well-known works, he also created smaller sculptures cast in bronze or aluminum. Charles was especially adept at working with the human figure, and he created portrait busts, as well as much larger figurative forms in materials ranging from welded steel to laminated plywood.

His works are highly stylized and often abstracted, although quite capable of capturing startlingly realistic details - sometimes twisted into sly visual puzzles and riddles. Forrester’s projects, especially his kinetic sphere sculptures and wire suspension works, inspired him to take a keen interest in engineering and merge interdisciplinary processes into his already diverse creative practice.

A prolific sculptor, Charles created over five-hundred fifty sculptures during his lifetime, with the majority found in private collections. In 1992, Charles retired from teaching. Five years later, he and Dorothy moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he maintained a studio until he died in 2010 at eighty-one.

The artist’s sculptures have been shown in many regional and national exhibits, receiving numerous awards. His artwork has been commissioned by the Springfield and Medford, Oregon public parks and the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Oregon, the Bundy Art Museum in Vermont, Broughton School in England, Bowling Green-Warren County, KY Hospital, Northern Telecom in Nashville, Gray Construction, Lilly Corporation, J.P. Matthews & Co. and numerous private patrons.