About the Artist

Michelle Forsyth (Pullman) received a 2010 GAP to pay for a studio assistant in the creation of two large-scale works. Forsyth has recently been invited to create two floor-based installations for two separate exhibitions. These installations will be made from thousands of hand-cut pieces of watercolored paper and beads, mounted to the ends of pins and set into flexible rubber floor panels.

Michelle received a 2007 GAP to cover travel and shipping costs for a solo exhibition at the Hogar Collection Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. For the exhibition, Forsyth continued her series of work entitled Florescence (Flowers for Iraq), in which she translates horrific images of Iraqi civilian casualties into intricate and beautiful patterns, comprised of thousands of hand-cut circles and flowers mounted to the end of insect pins. Several brightly colored polygonal forms, resembling small explosions will also be exhibited. Forsyth “employs the labor of the hand to counter the dehumanization of rapidly transmitted, digital images. Through this process, I attempt to rescue these horrific visuals from their de-personalized context and imbue them with a sense of beauty… they become memorials to the brutal realities of the horrors of war”.