54 Studies for Chair Transformations    2007

We were on our way to our summerhouse and studio on the North Fork of Long Island. In 1990 I built a chair every day for 16 days. I decided that my project for this summer of 2007 would be a return to Chair a Day.

We stopped at IKEA at exit 41 on the LIE to buy 2-dozen wine glasses, as we were planning a cocktail party for our North Fork friends to inaugurate the summer season. As we walked through the “marketplace” on our way to the cashier we were confronted with a super sale of their popular Stefan chair. I loaded 24 of these boxed un-assembled chairs into my Honda CRV trying hard not to break our 24 wine glasses.

I made axonometric drawings of the assembled Stefan Chair. I Xeroxed 96 copies of these drawings. Using graphite pencil, #11 Exacto blade, Prismacolor pencils, #2 Mongol graphite pencils and Elmer’s white glue, I transformed 54 of these photocopies.

I tried not to interpret these as representations of chairs. With each page I tried hard to only see abstract lines on a white paper. I dissected, decomposed, stretched, wrinkled, spliced, attached, sprayed, reproduced, sketched, cut, and pasted. My subconscious, my past work, my distractions, my caprices, my dreams poured from me and superimposed themselves into these pages.

I stopped deconstructing and reconstructing line on paper at number 54. I changed the title of this series to 54 Proposals for Chair Transformations. Using up my stash of 3-dimensional Stefan chairs to reconstruct, to mis-assemble, to destroy and to juxtapose, I needed to purchase additional chairs at full price.