“Here you have a chair—an object that we all take for granted—that has been completely transformed. You no longer look at a chair in the same way,” John Fairman says. Domino Chair by Clare Graham.
Spotlight
Are You Sitting Down?
Drop City Gallery doesn’t have velvet ropes around the art in their latest exhibits. You can sit on the art. It’s all chairs made of recycled, salvaged, or reclaimed materials. Go ahead, see what you can do with toothbrushes or already-read magazines
BY
Luci Masredjian


Sitting at Drop City Gallery: Stop-Sign Chair by Amy Pruzan.


Japanese Tansu chair by Ron Reeder.


“Take a Seat” at Drop City Gallery, through March 29. Admission is free. Details: (206) 624-2150.

Drop City is not the only venue in town featuring chairs this month. This ubiquitous, multifaceted piece of furniture is the subject of  “Chair: The fine art of seating” at Northwest Fine Woodworking (101 S. Jackson St., 206-625-0542), through March 15. The exhibit features new and classic chairs designed and built by Northwest furniture artisans.
If you thought great art couldn’t come from the junkyard, your basement—or even from the side of the road—think again. The proof sits at South Lake Union’s contemporary art showground, Drop City Gallery. John and Laurie Fairman, owners of Honeychurch Antiques, Glenn Richards and Drop City, recently stumbled upon a unique chair created by Los Angeles-based artist Clare Graham. Built several years earlier, Graham’s chair was made entirely from old dominos. “I’ve always been fascinated with multiples and collect things to an obsessive-compulsive degree,” Graham says. “Once something finds its separate shape and life from mine, I can let it go find its new life, knowing its destiny is not the dump.”

Inspired by both the creativity and eco-friendliness of Graham’s domino chair, Drop City Gallery in August 2007 proposed a challenge to anyone interested in taking on the task: Create an original chair made of recycled, salvaged or reclaimed materials. The gallery chose pieces by 15 artists—among them architects, designers and craftspeople.

“Chair shows have always been done, but we put a different spin on it,” says exhibit curator Erika Fairman. Out with the traditional gallery layout; enter an inventive, stimulating arena. Drop City Gallery invites guests to “Take a Seat”—to experience creative, challenging and environmentally friendly artwork and craftsmanship. The exhibit of more than 20 artist-designed chairs includes pieces made out of old photographs, fabrics, quilts, textiles and parts of an abandoned street sign.

The chairs came from a variety of sources—some the result of Drop City’s challenge and others via students’ classwork. Artist Amy Pruzan, for example, was inspired by an assignment called “deconstruction reconstruction” at Cornish College of the Arts. She created her “Reupholstering Defacement” chair out of a welded street sign. “I came across an abandoned stop sign and thought, ‘what a waste of good material,’” Pruzan says.

Mercer Island native Ron Reeder constructed his chair out of an antique tansu—a traditional Japanese wooden chest. With a background in woodworking and six years spent living in Japan, he found it natural to integrate the two. Reeder took apart and reconstructed the tansu, built circa 1820, then papered the panels on its sliding doors and the inside of the drawers with pages from old Japanese books. “It was quite the experience to take something like that apart,” Reeder says. “I felt a kinship with old crafters, and it felt good recycling.”  His chair is practical too. “The tansu has workable doors and drawers, and if you enjoy sitting in the lotus position, it’s quite functional,” Reeder explains.

“We want to be different,” Fairman says of the show. “We want to do more than hang art on the walls and sell it—we want Drop City Gallery to be a space for people to think, create and have a dialogue.”