Share-a-Chair

Share-a-Chair #15: Erin's lounge-y work chair done

2010-05-27T22:35:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, I finished this chair for my amazing client Erin. It's not everyday that someone trusts you when you say you want to make a substantial structural element of their chair using paper. That said, let's get the obvious questions out of the way first:

Q: Can you sit on it?
A: Yes.

Q: But won't it break or tear or explode?
A: No.

Q: How come?
A: Because the paper is pretty thick and heavy (120 lb cold press water color), folded over itself a couple times to form strips and then woven together. The woven design redistributes weight across several points in the weave as opposed to just one area.

Q: How did you color the paper?
A: Several cartons of Rit Dye and a large sink. Rit dye is awesome, by the way. It's an inexpensive, versatile product that I'll definitely use again.

Q: What would happen if you put this chair near a fireplace?
A: That would not be a good idea.

In all seriousness, this is a mostly uncomplicated design that combines a woven seat with a sturdy walnut frame. Sure, the paper part is interesting, and some may consider it innovative, but I've done that before.

For me, the exciting part was working with bendable plywood, otherwise known as "bender board" or "wacky wood". To create the sweeping, curved stretcher, I stacked and glued three layers of the plywood and veneered both sides with walnut. The woven paper strips stretch over and around the form where they attach to the back side with grommets and stainless steel screws.

I have another chair in the works now, but it will have to wait until I'm a little further along on a few tables. I guess that means the chair has been tabled.

Share-a-Chair featured on podcast

2010-05-05T19:24:00.001-05:00

In late March, I recorded a conversation with The Sawdust Chronicles, a woodworking and design podcast created and produced by woodworker Rick Waters. The edited version of our conversation is now posted on the Sawdust Chronicles website, and imbedded here. If you're interested in learning a little more about my process and aesthetic, especially as they relate to chair making, take a listen:

The Sawdust Chronicles Episode 42 - Share-a-Chair with Peter Cales

Erin's Chair: Moving Forward

2010-04-24T18:56:00.000-05:00

As I was wrapping up Jason's LP cabinet, I was able to get back to Erin's lounge/work chair, which is simultaneously my first attempt with bent plywood and with a dyed paper seat. At about 34" tall x 24" wide in the seat, this is one of the larger chairs I've made yet. I've been experimenting with dyes that will saturate the paper and produce the right sort of muddy green tone that is desired, with mixed results.

While I search for the right combination of color and saturation for the dye, I've made significant progress on the structural component of this chair. I started by ripping several strips of bendable plywood. I glued and screwed 3 layers of the 3/8" strips together and affixed them to a curved form made of MDF and 2" x 4" blocks. The layered, bent strips have been cut to length, and will soon (hopefully Sunday) be sanded and veneered with walnut.

This chair's legs and additional structural components are made of solid walnut. I've cut and shaped these structural pieces and dry fit everything together. The final step will be weaving the strips of dyed paper together and attaching them to the chair. The finished piece will have exposed stainless steel screws and a nice durable finish. And voila! Erin has a new share-a-chair (#15, if I'm counting right...)

Erin's Lounge-y Work Chair: Design Process

2010-03-28T12:56:00.001-05:00

I'm really excited for my newest chair, a commission for my client, Erin. Erin looked around Omaha for an affordable chair that she could work from as well as curl up in to take a nap. She ended up giving me a chance to design something that would fit into her eclectic array of furniture, and these are a couple sketches of what we came up with.

The basic frame of the chair will be a combination of bent plywood and solid walnut. That will serve as a strong structure to attach woven strips of paper in a process similar to the "Offering" chair I made last year. We're taking things a bit further with Erin's chair by dyeing the paper strips a dark green color, which I think will add some depth and texture to the design. The final dimensions will be a little different than those shown in the drawings, but will generally look like what is shown here. Oh, and please excuse my chicken scratch handwriting in the images.

I'll post some additional photos as I continue the building process over the next couple weeks. Later today I'm headed to Dick Blick and Mangelsen's in search of dye samples. This will be a fun one!

Bar Stools finished; contemplating my next move

2010-02-25T22:40:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick update with a few photos of the finished version of the bar stools I made for my friend Eddith.

Since the previous post I finished the second chair in the pair, and stained and finished them both. For the stain I used a combination of cherry stain, color reducer and a darker walnut stain in an attempt to match some of Eddith's existing handmade furniture. I haven't delivered the stools yet to see how closely they match, so I'll keep my fingers crossed until next week.

Next up for the Share-a-Chair side of my work...? I'm not sure, but I've been thinking about revisiting my "Ark" rocking chair design.

A Post-Wedding present: Eddith's barstools

2010-02-11T22:13:00.001-06:00

Niz and I got married in a small family ceremony about 4 months ago. Besides the fact that this was our wedding day, part of what made the ceremony so great was the location.

We were lucky enough to meet local artist Eddith Buis a few months earlier, at the same time we were searching for a unique wedding location. She graciously offered her cozy, contemporary sculpture garden to us for the ceremony. The backdrop of stone sculptures, colorful artwork and the ultra-modern design of her midtown home (designed by Eddy Santamaria of Omaha firm Contrivium) turned out to be the perfect place for us. The door you can see in the background of the photo on the left (taken by Kevin Jones) is my favorite part of the exterior, and was locally made by John Burger of Council Bluffs.

As a thank you to Eddith, I've designed a pair of cherry barstools that I'm honored will be positioned amongst some pretty amazing art and design in her house.

The two low res pictures here show one of the bar stools mostly dry fit together. The 5 thin pieces along the back are bent at a shallow angle and form a single back leg. The 4 shorter bars running laterally on the underside serve as both supports for the back legs and a sort of shelf. Both stools are 14" wide x 30" tall by 16" deep. Ultimately, they'll be lightly stained to match some existing interior cherry pieces in Eddith's home. But before I get to that, I need to finish framing up the seat and do a little (ugh) sanding. It also looks like I need to remember to bring a better camera to my studio next time.

Yes Darling, but is it art? Or Why I started making chairs

2009-12-11T21:53:00.000-06:00

I've been flirting with this post for a while now, particularly since a recent phone/Twitter conversation with my new woodworking buddy Adam King a couple months ago. Over the course of several exchanges and conversations I've had with Adam and other friends and colleagues, I've started to ponder what my place is as a woodworker, builder or artist, and what, in fact, if anything, I should call myself. And while this post is concerned with me, I think it's an important question for anyone who creates things with physical or digital materials to consider. For starters, though, humor me as I share my path to where I am now, and thus, this question.

When I was growing up, my dad had a basement workshop that he used to make boxes, shelves, pieces of furniture and other odds and ends, mostly just for fun. I used to follow him around, holding tools and asking pestering questions, but didn't show much interest in doing my own projects until I was much older. I was much more interested in other mediums I considered more exotic, such as oil painting and glass work. When I went to college, I switched back and forth among majors and took every art class I could fit in my schedule. I was never able to settle on one thing that really raised my sails. I would start a class with excitement, hellbent on proving to myself that this was the thing for me. But eventually I'd get bored, and start to meander, which led to work that was uninspired and not particularly well conceived. Eventually, Littleton Alston, one of my professors, kind of took me under his wing, and for a while, I was a sculpture major. That didn't last long, either; it just wasn't something I saw a future for myself in. But I continued working with Littleton and he became a major inspiration and resource for me - that's a story that demands a post of its own.

I still knew I wanted to make things that looked interesting but had some sort of physical usefulness. So, I started making boxes and trying my hand at a few coffee tables. But just as with the other traditional mediums I was working in, I felt confined. I felt like I was making things that were ultimately just tables, or just boxes. My designs were a reflection of my own aesthetic, but this wasn't enough.

Then came my first chair, and an entire world of possibility seemed to open up for me. I don't think I approached making a chair any differently than I had other items. But the foreigness of its elements, and its symbiotic relationship with the human form, challenged and ignited me in ways that nothing else had. I started considering the negative and positive space occupied and created by a chair, such as the back and seat. I became just as interested in the space underneath the seat and its overall silhouette too. In fact, with my earliest chair designs, I gave consideration to these elements of form more than I did things like weight distribution, scale and structural stability. It quickly occurred to me that with chairs I could convey ideas, ask question and invite interaction. In effect, a chair no longer had - and in my case, I decided no longer could - be just a thing you sit on. Thankfully, I've found a network of people who find this interesting and are willing to entertain my ideas.

That leaves me here, in the present, and still feeling a little inbetween things. Most people, including myself, would definitely not call me a craftsman. With my design process (or, really, lack of one) and building process (there's a reason my other site is called Measure Cut Cut), I'm probably more of an insult to craftsmen. I don't think about using complex joinery; among the many things I can "live with" might be a 1/16" gap; if you drop a woodworking term, there's a pretty good likelihood that I'll have to pretend to know what you're talking about. Perhaps this is just impatience or a lack of studiousness on my part. I simply believe that these are not the most important things to consider in my finished work, at least not right now.

I suppose I'm not concerned a whole lot with the semantics of titles. However, for all of us who choose to do what is often labeled "woodworking", there is a financial issue at stake as well. If something has function, is it less compelling, intellectually, physically and aesthetically than, say, an abstract painting? Should it be treated less uniquely by the marketplace?

I re-visited Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum several months ago when my family came for a visit. While looking at a Mark Rothko painting, I was struck by the fact that none of the beautiful cherry benches placed throughout the museum had any tag identifying their maker, date or material. What is it that keeps one of these benches from being the thing protected by velvet ropes with a label next to it on the wall? I suppose, practically, there wouldn't be anything to sit on then, huh?

For those of us, again, who are often labeled, or call ourselves "woodworkers", I think a more important question than the semantics - or semiotics - of a title is, Why am I making this object? or maybe, Is this object more than it appears to be? or maybe even, Why is this object what it is?

If we continue to ask ourselves these questions, and ask other makers and consumers to consider them in relation to our work and their own, we will continue striving to put as much of ourselves in our work as we can. Perhaps that's all that matters.

I never cared much for titles anyway : )

Bemis Auction recap

2009-11-20T14:44:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday night Niz and I attended the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts' 11th Annual Art Auction. This was my first experience with the auction - as both a contributing artist and attendee - having let a general apathy for galleries (and dislike of openings) keep me away since I became aware of the auction a couple years ago. I had always assumed the auction was very Art with a capital "A", and only open to Omaha's wealthiest clientele. I think I'm a little right about both of those things, but I had a great time and the crowd represented a wide swath of the metro-area.

The event itself was very well put together and gave donors and artists alike a huge spread of grilled veggies, bread, dips, lamb lollipops (yum!) wine, beer and even a pasta bar to complement the art. By the time we left, just prior to the live auction, things were getting stuffy. There were points throughout the night that it was a little difficult to maneuver some of the gallery space because of the swell of attendees and shear volume of work covering the walls and floor spaces. With silent auctions, it's not uncommon to see work packed in close together, and that was definitely the case here. I wondered if the volume of work would counteract competition in bidding, and thus drive sales prices down. Judging from the Bemis Center's own recap, which called this year's auction the most lucrative ever, that didn't seem to be the case. That's a good thing for everybody, especially the Bemis's Residency Program, which is the main benefactor of the auction.

So what about the art? Well, I was amazed at the level represented by the work itself. There was stuff from some big, established national names (Dale Chihuly, North Platte Native Roy De Forest and Tony Berlant, among a big scoop of others). A healthy dose of Omaha transplants (Sean Ward, Mark Gilbert, Jun Kaneko, etc.) and past and current Bemis residents (including my two favorites since I've been there, Cody Vanderkay and Lori LaRusso) were also well represented. But it seemed like local work filled the most space in the 3 silent auction galleries, as well as a good portion of the live auction.

I've heard tales of a time when the Bemis Center wasn't always as friendly to the locals as it has seemed during my involvement over the past few years. You wouldn't know that now. It would be easy to say I have a bias, since I wouldn't have a workshop without them. But the Bemis's support for the Kent Bellows Studio & Center for the Visual Arts while it establishes itself seems to be a great way to impact local youth art development without taking on the capacity demands of a full-fledged and traditional education program.

To me, however, the true indication of local support is reflected in the breadth and level of work represented by Omaha artists in the auction, including work from Bemis staff members Matt Lowe and Joel M!ghty Damon. Outside the canonical (and often dry) touring exhibitions offered by the Joslyn, there isn't often a chance to see (let alone buy) work on such a significant and wide scale. For so many local artists to be given an opportunity to include their work is important to continue developing fertile local scenes.

I alluded to my own apprehension about galleries earlier. My criticism of them is that they make can make experiencing art feel like an exclusive activity, both financially and socially. The auction crowd might have drifted that way, but there was definitely representation from those more in my collecting and income bracket.

I think this was the first year they've included an online bidding platform too; I would assume the same for the live stream, courtesy of their bidding service, which I think was called Proxybid. It seemed to pay off at least once, during what I thought was the 2nd most dramatic part of the night. Local artist Mary Zicafoose's black-and-white "Ancient Text #12: Chain of Command" textile incited a bidding war between an online bidder and member of the live audience. A series of "going once, going twice"'s ended when the local bidder's high mark stood, and was subsequently greeted to a standing ovation from fellow audience members.

So what was the most dramatic moment of the night? Well, for me, it was the successful sale of my own piece (hey, you gotta be excited about yourself sometimes too, right?). I was fortunate enough to have been introduced to the winning bidder. And to my delight, she commented that she shared my vision that chairs should be vessels for sharing. All in all, it was a great night, and I'm extemely happy I had the chance to participate.

Share-a-Chair comes to ORGANISM @ Empty Room - Leave Words/Retrieve Words

2009-11-08T21:12:00.005-06:00

In conjunction with my collaborative project, ORGANISM: A Festival of Words & Building, I've created a series of unique interactive opportunities. The first is called "Leave Words/Retrieve Words." This Monday thru next Sunday when you visit the Empty Room, you can leave a note, letter, poem or other message for your best friend, mother, significant other or even a sworn nemesis! There are a series of 60 numbered, hand-stamped envelopes (see giant photo above) waiting at Empty Room. Your job is to leave a message in one of the envelopes and we'll generate an email or Twitter @ reply inviting the recipient to retrieve it from the space. Simply fill out the front with the appropriate contact information (Name, Twitter or Email address), seal the envelope (no licking required!), and hang it from the hook underneath the seat.

I'll continue adding new chairs and other small pieces of furniture to the space as the month progresses. Most of these items will be for sale, and as my first foray into social entrepreneurship, I'm donating 50% of the proceeds of all the pieces I sell to the Kent Bellows Studio & Center for the Visual Arts.

The Bellows Studio has been operating out of the Bemis Center for a year or so now. Their space is adjacent to the one I'm lucky enough to have as a workshop. Though I didn't initially pay much attention to my new neighbors, I gradually grew interested in the organization when I started seeing the student work displayed outside their door and crawling through the hallway. I also noticed they'd scored some dedicated, enthusiastic artist mentors to match their small staff. I was very lucky to have parents, friends and teachers who were supportive of my creative interests when I was younger. Some have even become mentors to me. It would be easy to think our budgets for the arts - particularly school-based programs - have become victims of our lean economy. But funds for the arts were thin even when the economy was healthy.

Over the course of the next two Saturdays, I'll have an opportunity to provide a couple workshops for Bellows students. We're going to explore structures and space as filtered through chair design. I think this is my way to continue exploring the Share-a-Chair idea.

Oh, an you can feel free to sit in the chairs at the Empty Room too. After all, that's what they're for.

Press Release: ORGANISM to grow in Empty Room

2009-10-28T16:01:00.002-05:00

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/.

## END ##

Full of news about an Empty Room

2009-10-09T16:01:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-01T00:06:00.004-05:00

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.

Bar Stools in Blues

2009-09-27T22:49:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-15T23:33:00.002-05:00

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

2009-09-14T20:41:00.001-05:00

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

2009-09-13T22:50:00.003-05:00

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.

An "Offering" for Bemis Center auction

2009-08-30T20:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I finished what will be my contribution to the Bemis Center auction, which I think takes place in mid-November. It's a chair called "Offering". It's made out of spalted honey locust, paper and assorted fasteners. Keeping in line with my "Share Your Chair" mission of working with ideals of relational aesthetics, it has an interactive component in the small paper box in the underneath area. Otherwise, believe it or not, it's fully functional as a chair; you could even stand on the paper seat and it wouldn't tear or break. That's if it were in your living room right now instead of mine. Pictures sprinkled randomly because I couldn't get Blogger's new settings to agree with me. Stupid Blogger!

Share Your Chair #9 with Paper seat

2009-08-27T21:58:00.002-05:00

Tonight I completed the woven paper seat for my newest chair, Share Your Chair #9. With this chair, I'm taking a small step forward toward my goal of making a functional piece of furniture that uses only paper as the structural component. I've done the same style of seat before, albeit I made a stronger attempt at keeping this one a little cleaner; I carted around and handled the first one too much and it got dusty. The other component, pictured above-right, was to use paper as part of the joinery. In the case of this chair, I'm tightly rolling the same paper used for the seat into short pinions. The thickness of the paper and the tightness of the roll make for a pretty compact and sturdy form. I may also make a cube form that would sit on or hang in the under structure, but am still experiencing that. There's a nice sheen on the wood, so I'm kind of disappointed that I've relegated it to 2nd string for this post, but I think the two elements will complement each other in the final piece. I'm taking a day off of work tomorrow - for wedding planning, business planning and chairmaking - so hopefully I'll finish the piece tomorrow and find out if I've taken a step forward or not.

Share Your Chair #9 - Taking Root

2009-08-13T21:56:00.015-05:00

For my current project, which will hopefully be a part of the upcoming Bemis auction, I'm using a wood that we're probably surrounded by in Nebraska, but that is new to me. When I was initially contemplating this chair, I wanted to save some money by using some stock I had in my shop. I could have used walnut, but I've made so much stuff out of it lately (Clean Plate table, Just Rest chair), I'm getting a little burned out on it. I remembered a cheap, one-off, rough cut piece of honey locust I'd bought several months ago at the Silver Creek Sawmill stored behind my lathe, and decided to plane it down and give it a shot. I was thrilled with what was hiding underneath the rough, gray exterior - a beautiful wood sporting a grain pattern similar to oak, but with a yellow and white tone and several spalted black tendrils creeping up at either end.

The thin, flat back and paper seat design is similar to the last chair I made, called "Root". But I'm trying to make this piece a little more refined; whereas I think the previous walnut version could be described as sort of a country chair. First, it will be slightly smaller and more streamlined. The angled pieces added to the back for support will either be eliminated or much less noticeable. This will allow the angle of the front legs and seat back - which doubles as one wide back leg - to only recline between 2.5 and 5 degrees.

I've been experimenting with using materials and fabrication processes lately that aren't typically associated with furniture, especially chairs. I've especially taken a liking to using paper, and plan to continue incorporating it further as a structural element in chairs and tables. Having learned a lesson from the first version of this chair, I'm not letting the woven strips of paper that will be the seat anywhere near the chair until it's time to put it together. Last time I used paper it got a little dusty and resulted in some of the seat acquiring a sort of light, dusty patina in some areas, which contributed to the chair's more handmade appearance.

Keeping up with the Jones's: A sort of, but not really recent project

2009-07-31T11:53:00.006-05:00

A couple friends of mine, Kevin and LaReesa Jones (if you're reading this, chances are you are one or them, or you know one of them) have been very supportive of me for quite a while now, and vice-versa. Rumor has it they toasted me at their wedding reception, but I wouldn't know.

Anyway, quite a while back, before I was even working in the Bemis basement, I started this bench project for them. It look well over a year, but I finally got it done and installed in their house several months ago. I stumbled on this digital photo last week and thought I'd go ahead and post it while waiting for Kevin to get a much better, professional one to me.

FYI... the finished version has super-cool egg-shaped bronze feet that I designed and was able to pour at Creighton with my friend and mentor Littleton Alston, who allowed me to pay him in burgers and potato chips (for his class, not just him). The pictures below are from the night we cast them. That bright orange light emitting from the kiln is as hot as it looks - about 2,000 degrees F.

"Root" sold at AFSP benefit!

2009-06-13T22:44:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Aaron and Robin S. for their support of my work, as well as other Omaha artists during Wednesday night's American Foundation for Suicide Prevention benefit and silent art auction at Jackson Artworks.

Special thanks also to Jean Incontro for helping organize the event and inviting me to participate in a great night of art for a great cause.

Stay tuned for more updates about my ever-growing list of projects!

"Root" chair finished; show June 10 @ Jackson Artworks

2009-06-03T22:02:00.017-05:00

Last weekend I finished a chair I'm calling "Root". I'm very proud of this chair because I accomplished what I set out to do with it in the beginning. I wanted to make a modern-rustic chair with a paper seat; and lo-and-behold, the

paper seat continues to hold (you can actually stand on the seat without it tearing!).

I'm also proud of the fact that I'm donating the entire sale of this chair to the Omaha chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a nonprofit organization that researches and educates local communities about suicide. The AFSP "is the leading national not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide through research, education and advocacy, and to reaching out to people with mental disorders and those impacted by suicide."

Although I don't have any personal connection to suicide, so the piece isn't specifically "about" suicide or prevention. However, I did use some pretty rough material; it's difficult to tell, but much of the wood has patches along the edge that have been bored out by bugs and fungus, damaging the wood. Therefore, I think I've made something new and beautiful out of something that was damaged and destroyed. You can take whatever message out of that you want.

The chair, along with work by many other (more) noteworthy artists will be sold during a silent auction next Wednesday, June 10th from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. at Jackson Artworks, 1108 Jackson St. in the Old Market. For ticketing information and more, please contact Barb White, (402) 320-5403.

Chair structure completed!

2009-05-21T17:52:00.005-05:00

I spent much of Wednesday evening with a piercing headache, but it didn't keep me from finishing the basic structure of this wooden and paper chair, which I'm now calling "Root".

I added a runner between the

two front legs for lateral support, and then ran an 1 1/4" square stringer from the center of the runner, through a mortise in the back and to the base of the back support. This process really pushed me to revisit my 9th grade geometry skills, but I think it turned out pretty cool. And it thankfully held my weight + Hazel the Dog when I sat in it! I still need to add a few anchors to pull things together more snuggly, do some shaping of the lateral seat holder and front of the seat, and a lot of sanding and finishing. Hopefully the next photos I post will be of the finished product.

Benefit Chair, Phase 2

2009-05-18T16:47:00.005-05:00

I've posted a couple of updated photos of the chair I'm making for an upcoming silent auction to benefit a local suicide prevention organization. After a little planning and trial and error, and a lot of luck, the woven paper seat has emerge!

I'm pretty happy about how this has worked out. Working

from a process I've used in a couple recent drawer bottoms, I've folded long, thin strips of some super-thick water color paper, added grommets to the ends, and screwed them to a simple seat frame. I wasn't sure about how the paper would hold the weight, but figured it would do okay if it was woven, thereby distributing the stress amongst several points, vs. on the ends of each paper. I also sanded each edge of the seat frame so the points where each paper bends around each edge of the frame is softer, and less likely to cut into the woven pieces.

I'm headed into the studio tonight to see if I can strengthen the who structure of the chair. Should be a good challenge, and I will post finished photos shortly.

New chair for benefit

2009-05-11T21:40:00.001-05:00

Here' s a little bit of a sneak preview of a new piece I'm working on for a benefit my friend Jean Incontro is putting together. This is just sort of pieced together, but when it's all said and done this walnut chair will have a slight recline (about 70 degrees) and a woven paper seat. Stay tuned for pictures of the seat - it should be a challenge, but hopefully will actually come together.

Just Rest Prototype

2009-05-07T23:48:00.000-05:00

I have the distinct honor of collaborating with Leslie Iwai and Kjell Cronn on a project we're calling "Just Rest". We're working with Mosaic Community Development's SupportWorks program and Siena Francis House to make tangible reminders of our community's need to support shelters in their work for compassionate justice. That's our basic mission. What this means is that we've all designed objects that reference domestic objects - those things we sometimes take for granted (chairs - that's me; bed rolls and pillows - Leslie; and trios of biographical shoes and game pieces - Kjell). Here's a sneak peak (albeit in black and white) of the chair I've designed. It's made of, what else, walnut, my favorite wood. But like some of the paper I've been trying to incorporate lately, I've designed and fabricated (with a HUGE amount of help from Leslie) a reversible canvas back. Check it out. Let me know what you think.

Share Your Chair #5 & 6

2009-04-17T19:54:00.003-05:00

I was hoping to get some professional photos of these two babies up here, but I'll have to wait a bit longer (I take shitty, shitty photos - no sense of composition whatsoever). These are my newest completed chairs, #5 (right, w/cage) and 6 (rocker). The rocker has a box with two small, deep drawers underneath. It's my first real rocking chair and I definitely have some improvements for the next one. The most important lesson I learned form building it was how important the curvature and balance of the rockers is. The chair may look pretty cool, and is in a sort of sculptural way, but it's improperly balanced, so is not relaxing to sit in. Maybe I have something there, but that definitely wasn't the purpose.

The more standard one is a new, improved version of Chair #1, with the "cage" and hook. This is probably the best chair I've made so fair in terms of proportion, execution and comfort.

Share Your Chair #4: Ark

2009-01-05T20:03:00.002-06:00

Update: My friend Tim G. and I worked out a sweet trade wherein I gave him this behemoth and he gave me a couple super-cool wood/nuclear holocaust/roulette wheel/encaustic paintings. I'm hoping we might still be able to incorporate the sharing/ritual component, as is the purpose of the chairs I'm making, via the blank canvases that are the feathers. Tim?

"Ark" was inspired by a little research into the Ark of the Covenant. From my reading, I found some descriptions of a chair that housed the Ark of the Covenant, protected by the wings of a golden eagle. Well, this is my interpretation of that. The body of the chair is fabricated from a variety of types of wood (cherry, maple, walnut, cabriuva, spanish cedar) cut into uniform diamond shapes. The wings are made of wood and have some movement at the joints. The feathers are paper, and can be detached, decorated and shared with others.

Share Your Chair #1

2009-01-05T19:56:00.002-06:00

This is my very first attempt at a chair, and my main impetus to start my "Share Your Chair" project. It has a small cage-like object and hook that is attached through the seat. Its sharer(s) can hang an item to share with another person. The materials used include paduak, holly and steel bolts.

Share Your Chair #3: Conflict Resolution

2009-01-05T19:37:00.001-06:00

This chair, which some people have referred to as a "courting chair" is titled "Conflict Resolution". It is the result of a couple of things. First, I had a couple friends who were in a relationship and seemed to be having some issues. It seemed obvious to me that they just needed to sit down and communicate with each other. In terms of the design, it coincided somewhat with my discovery of Italian grotto chairs, which have really piqued my interest lately. My hope for this chair is that its eventual sharer(s) will use it to confront a problem or issue in a relationship, and then pass it on to someone else who will do the same; and so on and so forth. The main wood (most of the chair) is redheart. The back seat panels are painted 1/4" plywood.