Bar Stools in Blues

I'm just wrapping up fabrication of two nearly identical bar stools for a new client, Derek. Derek saw the Just Rest chair during our soft opening at inCommon Community Development in July. He commissioned the stools, requesting something inspired by the Just Rest chair design, but in oak, and with a gray canvas back. I had moratorium on red oak for a while, because I get tired to seeing it so often, but I made an  exception here. After working with walnut so much recently, the wider, looser grain structure of the oak was a nice change of pace again.

The one pictured  is the first of the two, and I haven't put a finish on it yet. The canvas back is reversible, a design I had considerable assistance with - particularly in the initial fabrication - from Leslie Iwai. My grandma made the two I'll use for these stools, which just makes it that much cooler for me. The routed design comlements an existing piece Derek has. This is probably the most commercial piece I've done, and the process has been fun, so maybe I'll do some more of it in the near future.

Share-a-Chair redux - Part 3

Here's a different kind of share-a-chair pair (Share-a-Chair #3). Many people have referred to this pair of seats as a "Courting Chair". However, I call it "Conflict Resolution", because of how it forces the seated pair into close proximity to one another. Redheart, birch veneer 1/4" ply and a little white paint is all there is to it. Really, it's fundamentally just two separate chairs that use the middle rail to connect them together. I first showed this during the Bemis Center's Creativity Festival last summer. Right now half of it's holding a stereo speaker, lamp and telephone. Meh.

Share-a-Chair redux - Part 2

Next up is a pair of share-a-chairs! (Share-a-Chair #s 5 & 6, respectively) One is a rework of my first paduak cage chair (Share-a-Chair #1); the other is my first try at a rocking chair, to mixed results (it looks good, but the weight of the drawers on the bottom and angle of the seat threw off the balance, so it's a little awkward to sit in).

Share-a-Chair redux - Part 1 & Pecha Kucha

My photographer friend Kevin Jones gave me a disk of images of most of the work I've completed up to the beginning of this year. I've posted pictures of some of this work before, but Kevin's pictures are gorgeous, and I want to show them off. I'll post the chair photos here over the course of the next few days, and the other stuff on measurecutcut.com. This Wednesday, Sept. 16, I'll be speaking about my work for about 5 minutes (literally - 20 slides x 20 seconds each) at Slowdown in Omaha's next Pecha Kucha night. I think it starts around 8:00pm.

These first photos are from "Ark" (Share-a-Chair #4), which now resides in my friend Tim Guthrie's living room. This piece has been a major jumping off point for me because of the use of paper, snaps fasteners and the fabrication process to put all those different diamond shape pieces together as structural components.