My Life As A Chair

I sometimes like to pick up trash.

Not just any trash. Something with possibility. Better yet, something with soul.

This chair must be 100 years old! After I first saw it and drove by it 4 or 5 times I finally, one day, stopped and threw the thing in the back of my truck. It was molded, rain soaked, dirty brown, broken and falling apart waiting for trash day. But it had soul and it was obviously hand made. I regret not taking ‘before’ pictures. This one was taken by Joy after total disassembly, scraping down to bare wood, making new dowels, reshaping the back panel and dying of the wood. Some pieces bright red, some yellow and some orange. But at this stage it occurred to me, as it was propped up, that the name should be “My Life As A Chair”. It is beautiful (to me) but in disarray. And who knows what it will become. I have never been one to make a plan.

A project like this (as with my life) is never thought out before hand. Only when it is finished do I know what it will have become. (I will post this one finished in the near future.)

It is all glued together now, which took 3 days, and will be fully reborn soon as a lone ‘art chair’. I still don’t know what it will look like when finished but it will be sturdy, useful, fun and beautiful (in my eyes). We should get another 100 years out of it.

I can only wish the same for my life.