A Seat at the Table Exhibition Coming to the Bassett Gallery in Camden

One exhibitioin Spartanburg is drawing to a close as we’re preparing to move on to our second venue.  A Seat at the Table: The Chair as Aesthetic and Social Construct, will travel to the Bassett Gallery at the Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County on March 5.   At this next venue we will add a new artist, Professor Kim Ledee.  We will also be  enlivening this space with new pieces from our ongoing work.  Modules, multiples, diptychs and triptychs will predominate this time.  Professor Ledee  raises social consciousness through art that addresses growing income inequity and the slowing pace of social mobility in the United States in her diptych,  American Dream/American Nightmare.


My own work will be taking a somber turn from the whimsical art in the previous exhibition with my triptych on the theme of bondage. My first chair in this triptych, posted earlier, has a roll of tape on the seat.  Unfortunately the feedback that I am initially getting on this from viewers is that is looks like a roll of toilet paper.  Ah, critics! 

The second chair in this triptych incorporates ropes tied into various configurations.  This took a very long time to create, as I decided to actually study and practice different types of knots before setting up the roped chair  to draw.  I learned how to tie some of these knots by studying photographs of ship’s knots that I had taken earlier at the Charleston Harbor. 

These knots were not easy to reproduce by analyzing the pictures, and I am certain that most of these have to be taught by hands one step by step instruction.  I did manage to figure out some of the more rudimentary ones, however, and have included a few, such as the cat’s claw,  in my drawing. 

Ultimately I did not adhere to any particular style of knotting for the ropes draped along the chair in my drawing, instead making an agglomeration of the twisted, turned and tied.  Because of the loose arrangement of the ropes, the theme may now be less one of bondage, but of something or someone having escaped being tied - hence the new title: “Unbound.”

Strewn throughout the compositions are knots and binders that pay homage to some of the Japanese art that I studied earlier last year.  Along the feet of the chair are drawings of Eighteenth century Japanese netsuke, which were used as decorative carvings to attach pouches to sashes.  In the upper right corner of the drawing there is a black length of rope with a configuration taken from a detail of bound hawks in an Edo period Japanese screen painting by Soga Nichokuan.

The finished  drawing is a very studied piece of art work to be sure.