San Francisco, February 28, 2025 – The Museum of Craft and Design is delighted to announce its upcoming exhibition, A Roadmap to Stardust, on view from May 10 to September 14, 2025. This immersive installation features new site-specific work by acclaimed artists Neil Forrest and John Roloff—collaboratively known as OortCloudX—inviting visitors to explore the mysteries of the cosmos through the transformative lens of craft.

At its heart, A Roadmap to Stardust begins with the smallest building block—a speck of stardust—and expands into a wide-ranging narrative of myth and history. OortCloudX reinterprets ancient archetypes and creation myths through the timeless medium of ceramics, revealing a world where craft becomes a bridge between past and present. Antiquarian images of the heavens, reimagined origin stories, and legends of early civilizations converge to form a modern myth steeped in mysticism and scientific inquiry.

Inspired by the earliest known written poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, which was recorded on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, Forrest and Roloff recast the classic hero’s journey in a contemporary context. By seamlessly blending elements of mysticism, modern science, and hints of science fiction, A Roadmap to Stardust invites visitors to contemplate humanity’s eternal longing to explore the heavens, to create, and to transcend.

OortCloud X (Neil Forrest and John Roloff), Stardust Telescope I (detail – in progress), 2024, ceramic, mixed media.
Photo courtesy of Neil Forest.

In the galleries, the exhibition unfolds like an archaeological dig into an imagined past. Curious faux-historical artifacts, predominantly fashioned from clay, evoke the excavation of a long-lost civilization. Visitors will encounter reinterpreted “telescopes” crafted from elements reminiscent of Greek amphorae and classical statuary, alongside other relics such as crocodile skulls, warrior gear, and early technologies. These pieces collectively suggest an origin story where the very substance of Earth—clay—becomes a metaphor for creation and cosmic exploration. A Roadmap to Stardust also lays the groundwork for future explorations. In planned phases for 2026 and 2027, the exhibition will chart humanity’s voyage between fictional planets—where extraterrestrial soils play a role as pivotal as clay in our ancestral stories.

The Museum of Craft and Design’s exhibitions and programs are generously supported by Anonymous, the Windgate Foundation, and Grants for the Arts.

Above Image: OortCloud X (Neil Forrest and John Roloff), The Road Map to Stardust (wall graphic study),
2024, computer rendering composite. Image courtesy of John Roloff.

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Press/Media Preview:
Friday, May 9, 2025 | 5:00 PM–7:00 PM
RSVP to [email protected]

For more information and interview requests:
Sarah Beth Rosales, Marketing and Communications Director, Museum of Craft and Design at [email protected] or 415.773.0303.

About the Artist
Neil Forrest is an internationally exhibiting ceramic artist whose works emphasize corporeality and materiality. Forrest is noted for rethinking ornament in post-modern space. His architectonic strategies extend the reach of ceramics as three-dimensional matrices that could fill built spaces. His recent works and installations pursue specific questions of topical or anthropological concern. More narrative in nature, these often conflate historical archetypes with popular modernist iconography.

As a member of the collaborative OortCloudX, John Roloff and Neil Forrest create installations inspired from specific ceramic artifacts that offer ideas and questions towards our collective future. Forrest has 14 one-person exhibitions and over 80 group exhibitions to his credit. Exhibitions include Overthrown at the Denver Art Museum, the Cheongju Biennale in Korea and The Washingtonian Service in Washington D.C. He’s received several Canadian and Norwegian arts grants and lectured at international architecture and craft conferences. Neil Forrest is professor emeritus at NSCAD University and former research professor at The Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway.

John Roloff is an internationally exhibiting artist who works conceptually with site, process, and natural systems in the form of environmental and gallery installations. His work is fundamentally about ecology in an expanded frame engaging interrelated cycles of natural and man-made materials and processes. This world view, originating in studies of the earth sciences, was developed through the practice of ceramics, installations, and conceptual proposals to evolve site-alchemical and transformative merging of physical matter and living systems across geologic time through the lens of global metabolism.

John’s work has been seen both outdoors and in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, UC Berkeley Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Institution, Photoscene Cologne, the Venice Architectural and Art Biennales and The Snow Show, Kemi, Finland. A recipient of 3 artists visual arts fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, a California Arts Council grant for visual artists and a Bernard Osher Fellowship at the Exploratorium, he is Professor Emeritus in Sculpture/Ceramics, San Francisco Art Institute. He is represented by the Anglim/Trimble Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

About the Museum of Craft and Design
The Museum of Craft and Design (MCD) is San Francisco’s only museum devoted to craft and design. Founded in 2004, MCD showcases designers, makers, and artists through an exciting and distinctive series of craft and design-focused exhibitions and public programs. MCD explores the creative process and current perspectives in craft and design through inspired exhibitions and experiential programs. Learn more at sfmcd.org.