Chair a Day    1990

       How do I sketch chair ideas working directly in wood? In a piece called “Indeterminacy” John Cage reads ninety of his stories, each like a Zen Koan. He finishes each in exactly one minute. Some of these stories are long others short but always read with a one minute limitation.

Influenced by Cage, I made 16 chairs in 16 days. Timing myself to an eight-hour day I began early each morning making a chair and worked directly in wood. The dimensions of each chair was standard but the design and form was impulsive and unplanned.

         Broken Plywood Chair is inspired by the work of Charles Eames.

  I wanted to bend a sheet of plywood to drape like a piece of fabric over a chair frame.  The soaking of plywood preceding bending would have taken a considerable amount of time and I had set a limit of eight hours per chair. To prepare the 1/4 inch plywood for bending I sprayed it with water, wrapped it in plastic and kept it wet all day. But as the end of the day approached, I found that there was no way this wood would bend. My solution was to place the unbending plywood using some bricks as a form and drive my car over it.

         When making Chair with Wedges I used the joining technique of mortise and tenon (or the square peg in a square hole).  Because of my lack of chiseling experience and cabinet making skills the joints were loose, leading me to devise wedges to strengthen and stabilize the chair. These wedges are physical manifestations of normally hidden structural forces that are revealed in this chair and become decorative elements.