Press Release: ORGANISM to grow in Empty Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                              

Wednesday, October 28, 2009                                                   

Contact:                                                                      
Peter Cales, 402.415.7212
organism1109@gmail.com

ORGANISM to grow in Empty Room

Final installment of NoDo project to blend poetry, building

Omaha, NE – Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009 – In November slammers and hammer will take over the Empty Room when it becomes ORGANISM: A Festival of Words & Building. Created by furniture makers Peter Cales and Doug Kiser and poet Matt Mason, ORGANISM features two activities that couldn’t normally be combined – poetry and building.

Throughout November, the Empty Room space will evolve from a pile of chair parts, growing an “Organic Chair” to provide a constantly changing venue for poetry slams and other events scheduled throughout the month. ORGANISM is the final of six month-long projects to be featured in the retail bay located on the ground level of the 22 Floors development at 13th and Webster St.

ORGANISM opens Sunday, Nov. 1 at 3p.m. with a Day of the Dead reading and the beginnings of the Organic Chair. The public is encouraged to bring a poem by their favorite dead author to read. They can also help begin building the Organic Chair by bringing materials or tools to work in the space.

Poetry Slams, weekly events highlighting poets from Backwaters Press, and the consistent growth of the Organic Chair will anchor ORGANISM. These activities will often take place simultaneously, reacting to one another and the physical space in the Empty Room. Concerts, workshops and other events will also occur throughout the week. More intensive building opportunities and workshops will be available Saturdays and Sundays. Community participation is essential to the success of ORGANISM. Events are free and open to the public, but small donations of $2 – $10 are encouraged. The majority of proceeds will be donated to local charities and used to support visiting poets.

ORGANISM will close Saturday, Nov. 28 with a final poetry slam and the auction of the Organic Chair. As a thank you for the community’s participation, a portion of the proceeds from the auction will also be donated to a local charity.

For more information about ORGANISM, please visit the Facebook page: facebook.com/organismemptyroom

Interested parties can also follow ORGANISM on http://twitter.com/organism1109

Peter Cales creates art and furniture at his Omaha studio, MeasureCutCut, which is provided by the generous support of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. More information about Peter's work can be found at http://www.share-a-chair.com/ and http://www.measurecutcut.com/.

Doug Kiser is owner and operator of d KISER design.construct, inc. His primary business is remodeling kitchens and bathrooms and building custom furniture. More information about Doug's work can be found at http://www.dkiser.com/.

Matt Mason first full-length collection, Things We Don't Know We Don't Know (The Backwaters Press, 2006) won a Nebraska Book Award and was a Contemporary Poetry bestseller. More information about  Matt's work can be found at http://www.midverse.com/.

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Full of news about an Empty Room

I received some pretty big and good news recently. Myself and collaborators Doug Kiser and Matt Mason will be curating the final month of the Empty Room project in Omaha's NoDo district. Our project, called "Organism", will combine elements of chair making, building and design, sharing through words and art, organic architecture, slam poetry, writing workshops and a slew of other things. As the month progresses, our collaborative work - along with contributions from visitors - will combine to gradually grow and develop, transforming an empty space into something new and kinetic. That's the idea, anyway. I'm especially excited about this opportunity having had a taste of Empty Room involvement during Elle Lien's recent Clean Plate adventure. We'll be sharing developments and opportunities via Facebook, Twitter and a Wordpress site soon. More details on those as we get closer. For now, you should definitely head over to see the current super-cool Empty Room project, Jeff Hug's String Thing.

Bench

Okay, so this isn't technically a "chair", but it is furniture made to be sat on, so it's close enough. I finished this commissioned piece quite a while back, but just recently got back some pictures of it from a shoot earlier this year. This my second bench; oddly, both were designed to go in very specific spaces, and were made for two sets of people who are very close friends with one another. The first, which I unfortunately don't have any pictures of, resides in California with the Sass family.

This one, made for my very good friends Kevin (he took these fancy photos) and LaReesa, features a sort of organic design in bloodwood, holly and maple inlaid into walnut Turned legs, lots of mortises and tongue-and-groove construction make this one of the more complex pieces I've done. Those elements are augmented with egg-shaped bronze feet that were poured using an ingenious technique developed by my mentor and former boss Littleton Alston (Click here or here to see some of his amazing sculptures). Partly to protect the floor from denting, and partly to play on the idea of the egg shapes, there are small turned cups in bloodwood and holly that sit underneath each egg foot. Sometimes I refer to this as a fertility seat because of the eggs and organic design on top, but that probably grosses out Kevin and LaReesa. So sorry about that.

Btw... Every time I think about benches, I can't help to remember the son of some family friends. As a toddler one Christmas or holiday he received one of those plastic fisher price work benches and tool sets as a gift. He was so excited about his new toy he proceeded to run around the house (innocently) screaming about his "work bitch!" Hopefully that didn't stick.