Over the years, Arash and Forrest have expanded their creative partnership to include multimedia and cross-cultural works, lecturing, exhibiting, and creating pieces that blend traditional craft with modern commentary.

Their works often layer ancient Persian scribe techniques inspired by 9th century Nishapur Pottery with ephemeral social media posts, delving into the introspective nature of craft and demonstrating how cross-cultural exchange can address political discord. These exhibitions feature not only ceramic tiles and vessels but also large-scale installations, bricks, and calligraffiti.

A unique element of their collaboration is a culminating live performance where guests are served food on the very handcrafted dishes by the artists themselves, symbolizing the cultural significance of gathering, sharing dish and breaking bread, community, and the shared art of hospitality.

Their Selected Collaborative Exhibitions:

• The Earth is Broken, the Earth is Whole, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Minnesota, March–April 2019

• The Potter of Ages, Abgineh Museum, Tehran, Iran, December 2021

• Curtain, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Sanfrancisco, 2020- 2022.

• To Contain and To Serve, ICCNC Gallery, Oakland, California, October–November 2017

• Wisdom of the East, OACC Gallery, Oakland, California, November–December 2019

• Calligraphies in Conversation, San Francisco Center for the Book, San Francisco, California, June–Sept 2019

The Earth is broken, the earth is whole

The Earth is Broken, the Earth is Whole is a dialogue between four artists: Arash Shirinbab, Forrest Lesch-Middelton, Pedram Baldari and Nooshin Hakim Javadi. This exhibition featured ceramics, calligraphy, media, food, performance and installations that explore cultural and political exchanges between Middle Eastern and Western interpretations of our cultures in an attempt to communicate ideas of morality and justice, migration, and the seemingly simple act of making art in today’s complex and changing societal landscape. As part of the reception, the artists did a performance addressing themes of Disorientation, Reorientation, and Cultural Tagging.

This exhibition asks challenging questions, like, do we accept or reject the concept of globalization and migration? How do we embrace what is happening and what is to come? Can it really be as simple as sitting down together? Can something as commonplace as clay, a mineral ubiquitous to all cultures, transcend borders and become a catalyst for addressing such complex issues?

This exhibition was part of 'Claytopia', the 53rd annual conference for NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) and was selected as Top 5 Must See Exhibitions. 

Location: Hopkins Center for the Arts, Redepenning Gallery, Hopkins, Minnesota

Time: March - April 2019

Here's a blurb from an article by Alicia Eler about the exhibition published at the Minessota Star Tribune on April 4, 2019 (reference here)

Three installations occupy the center of the gallery, while the surrounding walls are covered with impeccably crafted stoneware. The first installation, "E Pluribus Unum" — the U.S. motto meaning "one out of many" — includes a shiny silver acrylic mirror of the American flag mosaicked in a traditional Iranian patterning technique. Below it, a pile of bricks look as if they've been salvaged from rubble, not unlike those seen in media images from Syria. They're partitioned off with "Do Not Enter" tape — but a sign says the bricks are available for sale.

The juxtaposition of welcoming viewers while keeping them out is reminiscent of the ongoing struggles over immigration and refugees. The flag offers no answers, only a muddled reflection of the self for anyone who stands in front of it.

Nearby, a wall has been covered in calligraphy by Shirinbab, with patterned tiles making up the floor below it. Next to it hangs a translation of a poem by Sherko Bekas, an Iraqi-Kurdish writer. The poem is told from the perspective of the wall, which is saddened and angry because it had been covered in propaganda. Across from it floats a giant red advertising balloon girdled by a band of "Do Not Enter" yellow tape, and weighed down by a replica of a gold commemorative key to the Statue of Liberty as it ever-so-slowly deflates. Again, a reminder of the complications of immigration, and of access to political power.

Beautiful ceramics form the other element of this exhibition. Some of these collaborations by Shirinbab and Lesch-Middleton are more utilitarian — the gracefully crafted brown-and-beige plates "Tale of Love (Large) Plate I, II, and III," with Arabic-Persian calligraphy, could have come from an ancient era. Shirinbab's intensive study of the elegant Arabic script known as Thuluth and the Persian style Nataliq gives the calligraphy a spiritual quality.

Other stoneware works, such as "Serving Platter IV," include typewriter-style text from tweets about immigration ("Unless you're an indigenous native American, we're all immigrants. ALL OF US ... "). The literalness of these plates feels a little trite but also painfully accurate. A lot of political information is communicated through tweets these days because #thetimes theyareachanging.