THE DOLL ARTIST'S CHAIR

Visiting gorgeous Oregon for its annual Shakespeare Festival allowed me to pick up a lovely mini chair by Selma's "Doll Artist" Nancy Hall.  Here's what the little flyer said about her works: "Her dolls have been shown in the Fire Mountain Gems and Beads Master catalog, Soft Dolls and Animals Magazine, Art Doll Quarterly and featured in Doll Costumers and Crafters Magazine. She has won numerous awards for her work including the Hoffman Challenge First Place Doll Award in 2011 as well as having her dolls tour nationally with the Hoffman Challenge." Here is her hand-crafted addition to SitWithMoi's Chairs Collection:

And here's a shot featuring the chair's equally charming backside:

Must find an equally charming mini-book to shelve on this blue felt-plus!


[Prov.: Oregon Cave Outfitters. Size: 10.25" height, 4" width, 3.75" depth]

A CLEVER, ENCHANTING STOOL

The first time I saw a picture of this hand-made stool, I was enchanted:

It’s handmade by Anna of Etsy shop AyuAna.  The stool is made of wood.  And it is built around a bolt and screw mechanism that allows one to adjust the stool’s height.  Here it is newly-arrived at la casa:

Seeing the stool in person affirmed the cleverness of its invention.  Anna must have thought about the bolt and screw and, in that non-scientific process of art-making, made a mental leap to use the structure as the core of a miniature, adjustable stool.  In a subsequent Etsy conversation, Anna told me she just had an idea, tried it out, and it worked! 

Anyway, I found the idea elegant in its simplicity, and made a mini-book to honor it entitled THE POLISH STOOL AFFAIR (a subject of a future post).  Meanwhile, I am just tickled to have this be part of SitWithMoi’s chair collection!

[Prov.: Anna of Etsy shop AyuAna.  Scale: 1:6 with height adjustable and seat 1.75”x1.75”]

THE ALLEGREZZA BENCH!

Poet-extraordinaire (and editor- and critic/scholar-extraordinaire as well) William Allegrezza is extraordinary for many poetic reasons.  For me, he's stellar in part because his poems are consistent in delivering an always highly-pleasurable read.  So go to that link-on-his-name and check out his work.  If you only have time today to check out one book (you should, of course, have more time tomorrow!), check out FRAGILE REPLACEMENTS (also published by the publisher of many mini-books here, Meritage Press). 

So, okay, that's an too-brief intro to moi pal Bill.  I am lucky to have his books in the home library, but also am delighted to have this rather mysterious concrete poetry set from him, to wit:

  

I'm not sure what the pieces are.  They look like elements from a children's toy.  Or some baking tool (now why do I say that when I wouldn't know? Anyhoo...) But what's significant are the writing on them.  These works are from a period of time -- though it wouldn't surprise me if it's still ongoing -- when Bill was trying to inscribe poetry on everything in the universe.  I do love poets with ambition!  Here's a detail:

 

... for a pattern to explain what, says the last line.  Mysterious but evocative such that one wants to speculate on what the line means, which is to say, inhabit the line -- ever a desired goal by poets.  So go ahead: inhabit and speculate!

Anyway, I've had these pieces on the bookshelf for years.  I didn't really know what to do with them except to shelve them in the poetry section of the library.  But with SitWithMoi, I now realize what they are.  Dear Readers, these elements form nothing less than -- drum roll please for the global introduction -- THE ALLEGREZZA BENCH (with side tables!).  Entonces:

Very kewl, yes?  The Poet With Chairs thinks so!  She tried it out and found it, indeed, a very congenial sitting experience! 

May we "shelve" a mini-book soon on THE ALLEGREZZA BENCH!

[Prov.: Gift from Poet-Furniture Maker Himself.  Scale: Bench: 6" width and 1" depth; circular side tables have 3" diameters]

THE CHAIR OF THREE HEARTS

[Related Posts: A Chair For A Heart and Like Mother, Like Son, Like Mother and The Best Valentine]

So, remember the above when I found a tiny stool or table from the debris caused from Michael making me a Valentine's Day Chair? Well, El Hijo said he actually meant to do something different with the tiny thingie.  "What?" Moi asked.  He said he thought he'd put one of Mom's bookmarks on the back to it to make another chair.  So we did so.  And it's like so:

Another delightful result!  I coo-ed mucho over it, and so I have another chair!  Wanna place a Book On It?

Then, I showed Michael the seat "cushion" I made for his first Valentine's Day chair.  I had cut up the cardboard he'd used while painting the chairs.  I thought it a brilliant move since, (1) his chair had no seat (see top image above), and (2) it continues the conceptual underpinning of re-using (as in, refusing to trash) the materials he'd used to make a Valentine's Day Present for his Loving Mom.

Here's the cushion and how it would "sit" (heh) on the chair:

Michael hated it.  He stressed: The chair is supposed to be EXACTLY the way he designed the chair, hole and all!  I backed away immediately, of course.  After all, we're all arteeeeests here with our strongly-held aesthetic opinions!

But I kept the cushion for future use -- for when I shelve a book on it.  Just don't tell him...

[Prov.: Handmade by Michael, Valentine's Day 2013. Scale: 5" height, 1.25" seat base width and depth.]

THE BEST VALENTINE!

[Related Posts: A Chair For A Heart and Like Mother, Like Son, Like Mother]

My son Michael just gave me the absolutely best Valentine's present a Mom can expect.  And, by the way, I wasn't expecting anything.  But lookit what Michael made and gave!  My favorite flowers and a handmade chair!

He was out in the garage banging loudly yesterday and he was actually, sniffle, making this!

Isn't it the most gorgeous, divine, fantastic miniature chair you have ever seen!?!  Well, but of course it is!!!!  Even that unpainted spot is just the PERFECT flaw, isn't it!!  And the funny thing is that my husband was convinced he was making something for a girl, CERTAINLY NOT MOM!  Hubby -- eat your words like they're a meal I cooked!  (For those of you who don't know Moi, let's just say I'm a failure as a domestic goddess.)

Since embarking on this project, I've learned much about chairs including how there is a folk art of making them out of clothespins.  I don't think Michael knew of this tradition; he said he was just looking for stuff in the garage with which to make a miniature chair, and he found the clothespins (we have clothespins? nevuh knew that. wonder how they got there...).  Which he then painted red just for Valentine's Day!  I swear -- that's just better than chocolate, and that's saying a lot!

It's so beautiful.... Let's all just take another look, shall we?  But of course we must!

These are the moments that make Moi think, I love my life ...!  Thank you, Son!


P.S.
Later in the evening, Michael took the pretty ribbon that was wrapped around the roses and turned it into a small flower.  I then festooned--festooned!--the chair with it!  Here's the final result of Michael's Valentine Chair:

P.P.S.
The next day, I went to the garage and looked lovingly at the mess El Hijo left behind in making his Valentine's Day Chair.  As you can imagine, it was impossible to get mad over the mess he left behind.  I cheerfully began to clean up, and lookit what I discovered among the debris:

It's charming, right?  It could be a side table or a footstool!  I suspect he left it behind because the legs aren't straight.  But a Mother's Love is a Mother's Love!  Of course I rescued it -- and look at the final result:

So perfect.  What a lovely Valentine -- to experience a child's love.


[Prov.: Handmade Purrrr-fectly for Valentine's Day 2013 by Michael. Size: 7" height, 3" width, 3" depth.]

LIKE MOTHER, LIKE SON, LIKE MOTHER

So I've obviously been obsessed with SitWithMoi in the last couple of months ... and the family has been observing such.  Well, the other day, my son came up to me and exclaimed, "Mom!  I made you a stool!"

I was so pleased.  Excitedly, Moi riposted: "Show Moi me!"

My 16-year-old showed me what I would come to label "Michael's Stool" (no pun intended. really).  Here is its global release:

I praised him to the north, to the south, to the east ... I praised him.  Hey, this is a 16-year-old boy so any engagement he shows with my life is a blessing!

So for the next hour or so, I kept looking at his stool and chuckling.  Then, I realized -- there's another chair in there....ta-dah.  Here is the global introduction to "Eileen's Chaise Lounge"!

Now, I could have stopped there (and nearly did) and the point would have been made.  But it felt like a poem cut off too short in its writing.  I looked around some more and ended up with this--a cardboard cut to the size of my chaise lounge and some of Mom's lovely fabric scrap:

I stretched out a single cotton ball for padding on the cardboard:

Then I folded the fabric over the above and created, ta-dah again, the chaise lounge pad for more comfortable seating!

Moi is either a genius ... or she just needs a new life.

But Moi is still very very proud of my beautiful son!  It's great to see his vision expand. Here he is, btw, Moi undisputed Heart:

INTRODUCING "THE RICHARD ODOM STOOL"!

Poet and Lacan-Aficionado John Bloomberg-Rissman is thoughtful and always thinking of Moi.  To wit, he recently sent me this blog post by Lisa N. Guenther, "Reading Plato on Death Row."  The article discusses a discussion group at Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Prison involving prisoners on death row and philosophy graduate students. At one point, Guenther cites Foucault considering "the possibility of shaping one's existence through aesthetic practice."  Foucault is quoted from a 1982 interview as saying

This transformation of one’s self by one’s own knowledge is, I think, something rather close to the aesthetic experience. Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting?

From that question, Guenther discusses how many of the prisoners are or had become artists:

Everyone in prison is an artist, it seems.  They paint, they draw, they write poetry, they tattoo themselves and others.  When they don’t have access to standard art supplies, they become even more creative, using toilet paper or white bread to create papier-mache sculptures, or scraping the pigment from M&Ms or Skittles to use as paint.  Richard Odom, a participant in our discussion group, makes doll furniture out of discarded toilet paper rolls.  He says, “Society has flushed us down the toilet, but we can still make something beautiful with the leftovers.”

It is through this discussion that I was introduced to Richard Odom's work; here's a photo of colored chairs and footstools he created from toilet paper rolls:

Odom's chairs are also featured in an exhibition entitled "Prison Galleries: Imagining Justice from the Inside Out" at Vanderbilt University's Sarratt Gallery. Here's another image:

I don't know anything about Richard Odom, but am inspired by how he turned to the objects within his environment and, from such, created art.  I was discussing this all with The Poet With Chairs the other day while she visited my studio, uh, dining room

and we decided we'd try to replicate his chairs since there are toilet paper rolls in the house. However, after considering the images and a toilet paper roll, I realized that a "chair" would be smaller than my desired 1:6-ish scale.  So I decided, instead, to make a stool.  First, I did this:

In looking at the result, I decided to shape a small back to the stool mirroring the circular curve of the toilet paper roll.

What was now needed was the seating pad.  Well, La Poeta y Yo looked around to see what we could use and we decided to create an upholstered seat from cotton balls!

So here you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen and Trans, the global introduction of THE RICHARD ODOM STOOL!  (Technically, Richard Odom-Inspired but let's get poetically minimal and make that moniker more punchy, eh!)

Once another toilet paper roll in the house empties itself into cardboard, I might take said cardboard roll and create a small, curved, braided back (which would be more in fitting with Mr. Odom's design).  Meanwhile, here's another shot at it (since it is, after all, such a photogenic thingie):

Now, I didn't need to hear the hubby's art criticism of moi stool ("anti-Platonic") to know I'm no Gerard Dago Jové.  Mr. Jové brilliantly makes miniature chairs (see his blog (en Espanol) HERE and the section on him at Tom Giannini's MiniatureChairman (in English) HERE).  But since La Poeta Con Silla is happy, Moi am too!

"The Richard Odom stool," proclaims La Poeta (with some of her To-Read-Books ever in tow--ever like Moi!), "is ergonomically correct for my back!"

Thanks to John Bloomberg-Rissman for writing to us about these fascinating topics and introducing me as well to Richard Odom as Artist.  Y'all should go buy John's VERY SMART BOOK!  And don't forget Volume 2 to said SMART BOOK!  Too bad I can't miniaturize them for "Books on Chairs"!
 

[Scale:  3.5" Height, 3" seat circumference, 3" from seat to floor.]

1/30/2013 UPDATE!!!!

Well, I kept being bothered by the back of the stool I made.  I just felt the back should be "braided" to really be in keeping with Richard Odom's design.  So, once a toilet paper roll emptied itself in the house (hah), I proceeded on such:

I next lined the inner side of it with yellow Post-it paper because I like the color combination of brown and yellow, to offer a more finished look (insofar as one can "finish" this toilet paper roll stool),  and to offer a more "comfortable" side to the person who'd sit on the chair.

Then The Poet With Chairs tried it on for size.  It fit!

La Poeta is pleased, and she placed her own books on the stool for the moment ...

I hope you've enjoyed this update since Moi lives to please Toi.

A CHAIR FOR A HEART

Yes, I have the token Playdoh project by my son.  He built me -- okay, he built it for a class project but gave it to Moi! -- what I consider to be a Chair For A Heart:

The cradle is Playdoh, the cushion is from cotton balls and the heart is papier-mache.  Here are the individual components:

Art Criticism Alert: The "chair" appropriately is a cradle rather than the conventional chair because of the subject matter's requirement of care, intimacy and love.  Equally appropriate, the cradle must come with an attached hand (brown Playdoh) to hold on to the heart.  The heart, interestingly, is not out of Playdoh but from the more fragile papier-mache material because the heart is, uh, fragile.  And that is your art criticism du jour; I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed blathering it.

Nota Bene: for some real art criticism albeit still in non-conventional ways (because Moi is non-conventional), feel free to check out my books MY ROMANCE or, in short story form, BEHIND THE BLUE CANVAS (the latter if you're feeling frisky). 

Synchronistically, my son was eating a pear the other day and he carved this out:

My son, my one and only son: he is my undisputed Heart...