Library Mobile Project

Harold E. Forgostein: Biographical Sketch

Harold Forgostein was born in Marquette, Michigan, on May 11, 1906. He attended high school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was staff cartoonist for the weekly school paper and for the yearbook. He was selected as a member of the National High School society for his political cartoons. As a young man, Harold had opportunities to explore the beautiful countryside of the Great Lakes area, where his family returned to spend summers, after the family had moved to Pennsylvania. In later life, he liked to share fond memories of long hours spent alone, paddling along the quiet waterways in a canoe. His love of virgin nature would later be evident in much of his artwork.

Harold graduated from Carnegie (Tech) Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with a B.A. in Painting, in 1927. He worked for two years to save enough money to go to New York to pursue a career in commercial art and painting.

In September of 1929, Harold arrived in New York. His commercial art career plans dashed by the Depression, he took a job teaching art to adults through the WPA program. Besides working. Besides working, Harold also found time to make daily trips to various art museums and galleries, and to paint. During this time he contacted the Temple through a mutual friend. Though this contact and at the request of the Temple founder, Harold began the magnificent Hiawatha series of oil paintings that is now part of the permanent collection of the Temple of the People in Halcyon.

In 1941, Harold moved to California to live in Halcyon. Over the years, between work and community responsibilities, Harold finished the majority of the Hiawatha oils, and began to paint watercolors of the dunes, a subject that fascinated him and led him to paint over 800 works.

In 1947, Harold began teaching art, drawing, design, watercolor, and still life painting to adult education classes at San Luis Obispo, and later in Morro Bay. Several of his students became the core group for the formation of the San Luis Art Association, an organization that continues to flourish today. Throughout this period he continued to paint, both in watercolor and is oil, a body of work of diverse subject matter and masterful technique, filled with love for the forces of nature and the drama and mystical significance of the moment.

In 1967 Harold retired from teaching, and in 1969 became Guardian-in-Chief of the Temple of the People. He continued in that capacity until his death in March of 1990. He enjoyed painting to the very end of his life.

Harold’s mobile making was approached with the idea of using recycled materials such as bottle corks, paper plates, and found objects such as corrugated plastic, vegetable brush, scrap carpeting and kitchen utensils. His challenge was to approach a topic with fun, humor and balance. Mobiles included themes such as Modes of Transportation, Circus, Jack Frost, A Stork Fishing, Cycle of Flower, and Bunny Painting Eggs. His approach to achieve balance was accomplished through varied shapes, sizes of shapes, and asymmetric and spiral wires.