A chair is a chair is a chair… unless it’s my latest project, a chair-ionette (thank you Tom Maderos, for the name of the thing). It’s not pretty, but it’s going to eventually be functional. Making a marionette out of a chair is more tricky than one would think.  The back is heavier than the front, so at the moment this one is kept in balance with two pairs of pliers on the seat.  Note the level on the top crossbar.

But I’m slowly figuring it out. In the end, it will be functional, and balanced, I can promise you that. Not pretty, though.

I have to work on it in my open doorway to reach it, so my studio neighbors think I’m crazy. “Don’t you know you can just go buy a chair?!? You don’t need to patch that one up!”

I’ve begun to think of the chair as a disarticulated skeleton that needs to be made whole and functional again. Or sort of. With flaws, but also now animate.

The good news is I have four more chairs just like this one waiting in the wings.