NORWOOD, Ohio — Rick DeForrest is used to hiding. At school. At home. Almost everywhere.
“A lot of my life has been about that,” DeForrest said.
The 57-year-old remembers reading out loud at Glen Este High School. And he remembers laughter coming from the back of the room. He remembers he was different. But back then, he didn't know why.
“Classrooms were really stressful, frightening places for me when I was a kid,” DeForrest said. “And art has always been this healing thing for me.”
Because he says he never felt like he was good at anything else.
His favorite sculpture has two heads. See why it represents this artist's dyslexia in the video below:
“I guess I’m the quintessential troubled kid,” DeForrest said. “It’s really hard to tell people that aren’t dyslexic what dyslexia is. Because there aren’t words to describe it.”
At his art studio in Norwood, he tries anyway. When he reads, the security guard says he sees words differently. He might mistake “were” for “what.” And as he’s explaining this to me, he mistakes the word “where” for “were.”
It's why he felt lost. Because he didn’t quite know why this was happening. And neither did his teachers.
“People didn’t talk about it,” DeForrest said.
And it’s why he’s making these sculptures now. Sculptures of people without arms. People without legs. People with letters of the alphabet molded into their bodies.
It's part of an exhibit at the Fitton Center in Hamilton. It's called "dysinformation," and it's all about his life growing up with dyslexia.
The idea came to him while driving down the highway in Cincinnati. He saw a billboard for a school for children with ADHD and dyslexia. At first, it made him mad. Because he wished he had something like that.
“Rick’s story is really interesting, because he’s kind of molding and reflecting on his personal experiences with the way things in modern times have changed,” said Kate Rowekamp, director of education and community outreach at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts. “Also, Rick’s work is just really cool.”
It’s why the Hamilton arts center made him its artist-in-residence. And why he led a free workshop for kids, where he instructed them to do whatever they wanted to.
Just use letters, he told them. Don't worry about the words.
“You are allowed to have a voice,” DeForrest said. “That’s the great thing about art, right?”
Want to see his work?
Thursday is the last day you can see this exhibit. It's free and open to the public at the Fitton Center, which is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
