In 2011, I started a series of quilts based on the chair. I had long wanted to depict a simple object in the form of a pieced quilt.

At the time, I did not realize that the chair is one of the hardest things to draw, let alone piece.

I certainly wasn’t the first artist who has been intrigued by the chair. But, I always tell myself– This may have been done before, but it hasn’t been done by you–so just do it. And so I did.

This is something I think a lot of people don’t realize. Yes. Everything has been done before. There is nothing new under the sun. Except you, your voice. That is where the originality comes from. You can see this clearly by looking at chairs made by other artists.

David Hockney liked chairs.

Franz Kline’s are of course black and white.

I just discovered Wang Haui Qing’s chairs. Aren’t the lovely?

Van Gogh seems to have started the whole thing. I think we all know this chair.

According to Spanish painter Antoni Tapies, “One can make art out of simple, humble things; small things can be transcendental…”

So, I made some chairs. You can see the complete collection on my website.

The chair of the day is the Hypnotist’s Chair.

I auditioned a half a dozen backgrounds for this chair.

Looking at this, makes me think I should make a chair with an ornate border. It looks like a framed painting, doesn’t it?

But that border migrated into a collection of pieced pink patchwork and then back into my bit bins.

It still hasn’t found it’s permanent home.

Meanwhile, I finally settled on the yellow and turquoise background.

One of the things I really like about this piece is that when abstracted the composition is still interesting.

How do I piece a chair? Well it took lots of practice and lots of piecing to figure out how to get the proportions right.

This month, the Hypnotist’s Chair traveled all the way across the states to be part of the SPUN 2015 exhibition. SPUN is an innovative fiber exhibit at Etui Fiber Arts in Larchmont, New York.

The Director of SPUN Jane Davila and the Assistant Director of SPUN Vivien Zepf have done an incredible job of organizing the show. They have been great to work with.

You can see more images of the show by clicking on the show website or visiting Vivien’s blog.

I find the show be a great eclectic, colorful collection of contemporary fiber. It really is worth the look. Or even better, visit the show until of October.

10 Oct This entry was published on October 10, 2015 at 11:03 AM. It’s filed under News And Events, Quilt Stories and tagged Chair as Art, Etui Fiber Arts Gallery, SPUN 2015, The Hypnotist's Chair. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.