Forrest Myers

Born in Long Beach, California, metalworker Forrest Myers studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he was inspired by the wire sculpture of Alexander Calder as well as the jazz of Ornette Coleman. In 1961, he moved to New York and joined a number of innovative artists and sculptors (all graduates of the San Francisco Art Institute), including Mark di Suvero, Robert Grosvenor, Ed Ruda, and others, in forming the artists’ cooperative The Park Place Gallery. When Park Place disbanded in 1967, Myers showed his work at the newly formed Paula Cooper Gallery. In 1968, he became a member of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a group founded as a laboratory for creative experimentation by the engineers Fred Waldhauer and Billy Kluver with artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Witman. Myers was among four members of E.A.T. commissioned to design the Pepsi Cola Pavilion and program at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, considered among the most important and influential installations to combine art and technology of the 20th century. Myers’ most famous work is The Wall, commissioned in 1973 by the public art organization, City Walls (now known as Public Art Fund). The 75 x 100 foot teal blue-painted wall, with projecting green-painted aluminum beams set in a grid pattern, was mounted on the corner of Houston Street and Broadway and became a SoHo icon. Forrest Myers’ sculptures are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, the Storm King Art Center, and the Virginia Museum of Art.

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