The Process
Each chair I work on is carefully chosen and lovely refurbished. I spend hours hunting through secondhand stores and online postings to find pieces with potential. When I find one with perfect "bones" I haul it home and strip it down. I am careful to preserve as much of the original foam and webbing as possible. My goal is to bring my vision alive, while remaining mindful of the environment and keeping waste to a minimum. Once the staples and old material have been removed (a tedious process!), I select the fabric, trim, corresponding paint and other art materials that I’ll use for re-upholstering.
For this collection I created hand painted, mosaic patterned fabrics that I used to upholster sections of each lounge. The fabric was constructed with heavy canvas treated with gesso, white paint and fabric medium. I painted the canvas with three or four inch squares and then carefully applied one inch squares cut from marbled momi paper to the top of them. Each square needed to be cut by hand because the fibrous paper was too much like fabric to be cut mechanically. For these pieces I cut out, applied and sealed approximately 8000 squares!
I called this collection "Reclaiming the Throne" and undertook it as a purposeful, embodied act of re-valuing the used and discarded feminine form. I finished each piece with my signature corset and created a series of corresponding 12"x12" acrylic and paper paintings for each colour grouping.
