Dawn Forbes was raised in Boise, ID. In 1990 to attend Whitman College, where she obtained a B.A. in studio art with an emphasis in sculpture. She has continued to reside in the Walla Walla Valley and currently lives in an old church building that functions as both home and studio.

Her steel assemblage work celebrates the agricultural history of the West, and serves as a means for her to document a landscape and way of life that she feels is too quicklyvanishing as more people occupy once open spaces and more farming is being done out of the country.

Forbes’ steel work is concerned with line and gesture. Important as well, is the character of the metal as she encounters it. The play of positive and negative space is manipulated to create dynamic compositions as old tools, tractor pieces and scrap steel are excavated from scrap yards, fields sides and farms and are rejoined with a sense of creative anatomy most often taking an equine form. The horse is a reoccurring image in all styles of Dawn’s work, a symbol of the West and both physical and spiritual movement.

Forbes’ clay and bronze works reveal a more playful part of the artist and her creative process. She forms the bodies of various northwest animals from clay to which scrap steel is added after firing to create legs,antlers, ears, etc. The pieces are either painted or raku fired. There is an endearing awkwardness in these forms and a sense of whimsy prevails. Dawn has recently begun molding some of her more popular ceramic forms and casting them in bronze. The bronze captures the pieces in a moreenduring form and its qualities adds another layer of richness to these celebratory works.