My Red Chair Affair

For the purposes of promoting the artistic efforts of Ahewlu Productions, we decided to participate in the Red Chair Project's silent auction. Participants in this silent auction decorate a small childrens chair from IKEA and provide an artistic experience for the auction winner.

At first it would seem obvious, that I should do a poetry reading from East of Pouring as my artistic offering . . . until it occured to me that few people in Orlando, Florida are going to want me to come to their house and read poetry from my "head in the oven" period. Slightly more, may enjoy erotic gay poetry . . . but I've sworn of Bridal Showers . . . since "the incident." (joking)

What could I do to make poetry . . . sexier?

Looking in the mirror, it was clear that I probably would not be able to lose 25 pounds before September 19th, so the whole stripper pole, hot oil rubdown and elaborate puppet show idea will have to wait for next year (yeah, that's the ticket).

I finally decided that I make killer sangria . . . and that if I was successful in getting my patrons drunk they, sedated, would be more likely to sit through a poetry reading . . . and if the heckling got to bad, I could at least outrun them. If the event became superlatively bad, then I could as a last resort . . . join them in inebriation - and care a lot less about how I've suffered for my art.

I submitted my idea, and wonder of wonders I was invited to join the silent auction. I was given three weeks to decorate a red chair. No problem right? No. Problem.

My red chair took every minute of three weeks, and was scaled back twice to adhere to the laws of the space-time continuum.

First I had thought that I would cover the chair with text from my book, and then have the elements of sangria orbiting the chair on very thin wire. My chair would be the magical chair of fruits with poetry by fruits. Heck, maybe Carmen Miranda would buy the chair, and I could read her her rights.

The first reality check was painting a white chair red. The chair absorbed red paint like a sponge, so that many coats were necessary. And have you ever considered how many surfaces there are on a chair. It's a cubist nightmare. Painting the chair red took two weeks. I realized it was going to take every fiber of my being to get text on the chair, so I jettisoned the flying fruit and committed to high quality text alone.

The second reality check was decal transferring text to the chair. Oy, veh. The text had to be printed as a mirror reflection, so that when it was applied to the chair it ended up right-side out. Microsoft Word does not enable mirror text. So I had to type all poems in Paintbrush and invert the text as graphic. Once printed on the decal material, the double adhesive text had to be surgically removed from wax paper and placed on the chair with tweezers.

One poem and I was out! I had two days to finish, and had only covered half of the seat with text. . . The book title was inadvertently glued to the newspaper on the coffee table.

I retreated to Plan 3: The white paint pen. This for the most part worked . . . but imbued the chair with the atmosphere of a subway train, instead of the throne of poetry and fruit I'd previously envisioned. Sigh.

But art is about manifesting ideals as physical, tangible objects. Successful artists respond with pragmatism to the pitfalls of the physical world. So, in the end the chair is more than a compromise . . . it was a learning experience. Stay tuned, to hear who the final winner of my Poetry and Sangria event is . . . and what the chair "went" for.