"Have a Seat for the Arts" is a charity group art exhibit. Metro Galleries and The Foundry gave artists the task of creating, painting, or sculpting a chairinto a piece of art. This is the story of my "chair."
The search for an inexpensive wooden chair that I could dismantle for a sculpture was fruitless; I couldn't find any that I could bare to tear apart and I was ona budget. So I built one of my own in the boiling heat of my backyard on what were my last days of summer.
I decided to make a spider out of my chair because there are things in this world that bug me. Sometimes I place spiders in the bug category, after all, they do bug me, but they are really in a category all their own: arachnids. The truth is spiders eat bugs and would be okay to co-exist with humanity, if they didn’t bite us too.
Cutting some of the chair legs apart, unscrewing most attachments completely, it slowly formed a spider. It didn’t seem exactly right the first try, so I cut a few more pieces from similar wood for an extra set of legs. The basic shape I made was clumsy and wouldn’t stand alone. To amend this problem, I nailed feet to each leg and reinforced every elbow and knee with extra nails.
Spiderchair Process
With leftover chair-wood, I fashioned a face with screws for eyes and nails for pinchers. After all the amendments, the spider still retained a bit of her personality by refusing to have all feet in a symmetrical order. For the color I imagined a light blue or a purple. When I arrived at the paint store, there were cans of black, red,gray, and brown spray paint. At the end of the aisle there was a can of CameoPink. Steering clear of a “Spiderman” or black widow theme, pink was the best choice.
Spiderchair
Creating this sculpture was about overcoming my fears. The whole time I was sawing, nailing, wiring, etc., I thought to myself: "This is a spider. You're supposed to stay away from these things." Even as I was in the middle of sawing, a little brown spider came to visit. I paused to stare at it for a moment, and them promptly retreated inside until he left. This sculpture had to become an exception to the rule because I knew every corner, every foot; I knew how it came to be. It was no longer alien, but something one could keep as a pet. The CameoPink only compliments that. I affectionately call my sculpture "Don't Panic." Had the sculpture remained a chair, it might not have been noticed, even though it was hand crafted by yours truly; It's better this way.
Have a Seat for the Arts
About the Exhibit:
"Have a Seat for the Arts" is presented by Metro Galleries and The Foundry Artist Collective. Each chair will be displayed at various places in The Arts District of Downtown Bakersfield, and will be for sale by silent auction where 30% of proceeds will go directly to charity. The exhibit is part of October's "First Friday," aka "Art-Walk," October 7, 2011, from 5-9pm.
