This is Not a Chair

Allow me to set the scene: in 2023 I was asked to refinish a rocking chair. The rocking chair was such a success, I ended up refinishing no less than 6 other pieces of antique furniture, including a pair of kitchen chairs for my own home. Eventually, I said (out loud to the dog who is an excellent listener) “I’m not doing any more of these. The sanding is killing me.”

Fast forward to July 2025. I’ve just dropped paintings off for the opening of Wypominki Kobiety and I’ve been talked into taking home a chair to refinish. For a good cause. White Rabbit Galleries would be having an auction. A “Chair-ity” Auction. Oh boy.

The chair in question was a faded terra cotta single mold plastic seat with bent chrome legs. A hideous mid-century staple of cafeterias and waiting rooms across the public sphere. Stackable, generic, impossible to rock back onto two legs. The patron chair of No-Fun-istan. A chair we all know and have no affection for, plundered from the basement of an abandoned city building.

“Look how many we have, do you want to take two?” NO I DO NOT.

I wondered if, as a final insult to my craft, it was even graffiti proof; if paint would even stick to it. I drove home with the chair wondering what I was going to do with this chair, considering that I had so recently swore to “NEVER do a chair again.” The chair was chauffeured home in the back of my cargo van wondering if it was finally going to get a new paint job after years of thankless service. Oh boy.

The assignment was to refinish the chair. I understood that was the expectation, but I was against it. I wanted to do something else with the chair. Really, anything else. Possibly throw it in the lake and pretend I never took it in the first place. I toyed with the idea of making a photo album of the chair in unusual places. A travelogue ala “Round Ireland With A Fridge.” Or a gallery catalogue extolling the virtues of the chair in such an environment. “Hideous Midcentury Molded Cafeteria Chair is the perfect accent when set nearby a waterfall, under a willow tree enjoying the sunset or sitting on the beach. Limited artist’s edition of one.” Oh boy.

I wrote a few notes, pretending to get the project started. The chair lived outside in my yard. I moved it around and sat in it in various locations. I tossed it in a bicycle trailer and towed it around the county park system taking pictures of it.

My affection for the chair did not grow.

I started seeing other chairs in random places. Another mid century chair outside the salt storage on the side of the bike path. A backed barstool sitting in the middle of the courthouse lawn. A glider chair on the median of SR 14. I got paranoid that someone else was doing my project. Or that I may be the imagined person in the head of a person doing this very project. Just a figment of someone else’s imagination while they struggled with an unlikeable chair. Thoughts of the chair began to lead me into a state of depersonalization. Oh boy.

Possibly worse, I wasn’t getting any pictures I was happy with. I consulted with my printer who assured me all the photos were good. I said maybe I should just do one. Just try to get one really good one. Finally, a week before deadline, we narrowed it down to three or four. I sent them around to friends and gallery partners but no one wanted to be the one to make a choice. I’m ashamed to have such spineless colleagues and friends, if you can even call them that. With no suggestions or self direction, I wrote the descriptions down on sheets of scrap paper. I put them on the floor, turned my back and threw a rock over my shoulder. Thud. Graffiti bridge it is. Don’t forget to always keep a rock around in case you need to make a critical decision like this.

I cleaned up the chair and signed it before I dropped it off at the gallery. I slipped my fancy paper print into a plexiglass block frame (thanks Monochrome Canvas!) I didn’t give it a title, hoping I would come up with something brilliant at the last minute. Spoiler alert: I did not.

“Marcel & Train (graffiti)” will be part of the silent auction. Buy it and you will get the framed photograph as well as the chair. You will have to pick it up yourself, I don’t ever want to see it again. I signed the chair in my completely juvenile rendition of the R. Mutt signature from Duchamp’s “The Fountain.” It would be good to remind you that I believe “The Fountain” is the singularity which ruined art in the modern era. A catastrophe from which I fear we will never recover. It is a recursive piece of trash, signed by an elitist moron with no purpose other than to irritate a group of people so inured with self indulgence that they masturbatorily enjoyed the scandal, carrying on for years about it, wanking “intellectually” and eventually polluting the entirety of western art even to this very day. TO. THIS. Day.

I did not sign the photograph, as I wanted to be clear to the viewer that the chair was the art, not the photograph.

The “Chair-ity Auction” will be held in person and online at White Rabbit Galleries. The in person auction is a ticketed event at 6pm on October 18th. Tickets are at the White Rabbit website: whiterabbitgalleries.org/chairity-tickets The online auction can be found at: givebutter.com/c/pWrtgU/auction/categories/54667/live-auction-chairs