Festivall
The second trip, the chair and I made, was to Festivall, in Charleston, West Virginia. http://www.festivallcharleston.com/ Festivall is a 10 day celebration of music and art and a variety of other activities. One project that they did this year was to create these 4 foot tall letters, spelling out Festival, and give them to nine different artists to have them do something with them.
Giant Red "T"
The chair and I visit the "T"
As you can see here, my contribution was the letter “T” which I painted red and then took a carving gouge to. I had not seen all of the letters together in one place, so it seemed like it might be fun to go see them and see if I could talk somebody into taking my picture with the giant “T”. I thought that the whole idea was a lot of fun and several of the other letters were pretty cool.
"FESTIVALL'
So , here I am, wandering around in this crowd of people carrying a dining chair. I have to admit, that at first, I was just a bit self conscious and felt more than a little silly. There are advantages in having your own chair at an event like this though. For example, I came across a band playing on a stage set up in the street and decided to listen for a bit, which only involved finding a place to set my chair there on the sidewalk. Then I started to run into some folks that I know and was able to persuade them to let me take their picture sitting in the chair. Actually, the persuading part wasn’t all that hard, as once I explained what I was up to, [ what is it I am up to again?] people were eager to be involved.
The first person I ran into was Ron Sowell. Ron is a musician and the leader of the Mountain Stage radio show band. http://www.mountainstage.org/ Mountain Stage is a great radio show, that is recorded live in Charleston, and is one of our favorite things to go to. Shortly after running into Ron, I ran into Larry Groce who is the host, artistic director, and one of the founders of Mountain Stage. He is also the director of FESTIVALL.
Ron Sowell
Larry Groce
After that, I got on a roll and found several other folks that were willing to have their picture taken in the chair. One was Adam Harris who is the announcer for mountain Stage, and in this instance the chair was able to get it’s picture taken on stage. Another one that I thought was fun was Lori McKinney, of the band Option 22,http://www.option22.net/fr_home.cfm who posed sitting at her drum set. They were the band I stopped to listen to there on the street.
All in all, it turned out to be a fun day. Turns out that carrying a chair around is a fun way to meet people. Who would have thought it? Stay tuned for more of the travels of the Wandering Chair. Next, the chair and I go canoeing.
Adam Harris
Lori McKinney
Tags: cherry, creativity, fine furniture, furniture, furniture design, furniture making, handmade furniture, Inspiration, lumber, marketing, meander, pictures, S Curve, West Virginia, woodshop, woodworking
The chair and the T should definitely meet up sometime! Have your people call my people………