Located in Birch Bay, Washington, Forrest Chel creates original designs and woodburns each piece by hand.
In their art, Forrest hopes inspire wonder of the natural world, spark whimsy, and explore their deep curiosity and yearning for truth.
Mountlake Terrace Friends of the Arts winner, 2024 & 2025
Homiens International Art Prize Notable Mention, 2025
Featured Artist of Wings Over Water Festival, 2025
Festival and market Vendor, 2019-2026
Thyme Will Tell
Warm and wild, I glimpse truths peeking from tree cavities. I see puzzle pieces of truth in old, old lichen and the rhythm of what's real in the cultural dances of crows. I yearn to know what they know, but it's not in my bones, in my feathers, in my whiskers, like it is in theirs.
I once yelled to the foggy ocean, "tell me the truth!!!" I realized later that it was rude to yell at that gentle fog. Maybe time, or thyme, will tell if I ask real nice.
Maybe I can focus on wonder and mystery and curiosity and beg them to wait another seven generations to reveal their truths. Maybe by then I will have grown whiskers and feathers that understand the rituals of a raccoon and the low caws of a crow.
Maybe by then I will be worthy to step into a tree cavity, into a portal to home.
pyrography on maple wood
9x30x1, 2025
Available in Shop
How I adore you, Barn Swallow.
Your acrobatic joy over twisted fields,
your determined grace over watery depths,
your tumbling fun for shining insects.
Persistent joy for a reward of bugs
My world is different than yours, Barn Swallow.
A twisted human field,
worldly depths of lies and violence,
a tumbling dive of a different kind.
But, like you, mischevious Swallow,
I want to feel pleasure in survival.
I want to feel swooping, adrenaline joy,
I want to sing and glide with my allies.
I want to look straight down into this terrible, chaotic, watery field and search for wildflowers.
Even if my reward is just bugs.
Pyrography on alder wood, 2025
18x15x1.5 inch
Barn Swallow
Do you judge me as I judge you?
By whose standard do you judge?
Yours?
Mine?
the Lemming's?
Are you not the Lemming?
pyrography on maple wood
10x42x2 inch
Available in Shop
Barn Owl
Resting Place
From the pond outside my window, I hear the frogs sing.
Their chorus summons life, and tells us it is Spring.
pyrography on maple wood
9x18x1.5, 2023
Available in Shop
From a tree above the creek, Kingfisher hunts. Diving again and again, up and down, up and down. The motions form a spiral, and the spiral forms a life.
Pyrography on maple wood, 2024
12x25x1, 2024
Available in Shop
Kingfisher
TheThe
The Brutal, Natural Pull
I ponder, I Yearn, I Want
It is so painful
to ponder, to yearn, to want
It is so beautiful
to ponder, to yearn, to want
pyrography on English Walnut wood
11x18x1 inch, 2025
Harrier Hawk and Short-eared Owl
Mozasu Foraging
I find myself watching them, and I notice they are watching me
I am called to wonder: how long have they noticed me and how much do they know? What else do I not notice and how much do I not know?
pyrography on maple wood
9x23x1, 2024
Red-breasted Woodpeckers
I saw a bird on a tree
And wondered who they were
Red breast, on a holy, holey tree
Long beak, plunged deep, sucking sap to drink.
If I ask,
They might tell me.
Or, they may keep their secrets.
Either way, it's fun to ask.
This time, they told me,
With their red breast, long beak, sucking sap,
A Red-breasted sapsucker.
pyrography and water paint on local birch wood,
8x24x.5 inch, 2025
Old Life
It's funny to think we know
It's funny to think we could ever know
What's living, who's out there, and for how long.
It's wonderful to not know. It's wonderful to wonder.
What's living, who's out there, and for how long.
Pyrography, maple wood
Wire installed for wall display
12×20×1
2023
Mushroom Forests
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