Art Chairs

Chairs have long held a fascination for Meesh. She collected miniature chairs as a child and later began photographing chairs "in the wild," that is, the abandoned chair, the lonely chair, the out-of-place chair, the ruined chair. There was never conscious intention on her part when these sightings occurred; it simply was an obsession. On walks around the neighborhood, through city streets and alleys, even on explorations of the natural world, the chairs appeared– ready for capture. Down the road, she felt inspired to refashion, embellish, and reconfigure found chairs. The first effort was the Time Out Chair, with its bed of sharp nails. Later efforts produced In the Eye of the Beholder, a collaged chair reflecting the entrenched wounds of self-doubt; Black & White & Read All Over, a red chair covered with bad news headlines; Heal Me, a chair studded with silver milagros, traditional Mexican folk charms used to invoke healing miracles; Blue Dreamer, an indigo-toned chair intended as a reliquary for our subconscious stories; I'm Speechless – Words Escape Me, a black chair painted with empty word bubbles, and other thematically-driven pieces. So, one might ask, why chairs? They're simple, useful objects intended for support and comfort. These art chairs serve a new purpose: to process and heal life's grievances to explore new avenues and ideas, or simply to engender beauty in a way that merges form and function.