This year is the first time I’m participating in a local arts fundraiser. The 3rd Annual Chair-ity Auction is a fun event that will be taking place during the Art-A-Licious Festival in Adrian, Michigan (September 17 & 18). The money raised will be used to benefit the Art-A-Licious Festival and the Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee Art Program. Local artists are asked to “create constructed, altered, and/or embellished chairs”; you can use your own chair or use one of those provided. Here’s the chair I chose:

It’s an older wooden chair that came out of one of the city offices (there’s a little metal plaque on the underside of the seat). What drew me to it was the incongruity of the straight forward no-nonsense slatted back and dished seat combined with those rather odd curved arms and turned arm supports and front legs. This was a chair that screamed out “I want to be Silly!”.

So I obliged:

I’m calling it Motley. What with the Jester colors I chose to paint it, I couldn’t very well call it much of anything else. The dominant color is the dark purple of the back, back legs and larger portions of the turned areas. The green is so very nearly neon that I’m glad I chose a darker rose and an almost school bus yellow as the other bright colors. The seat and stretcher bars I painted a dark blue to add balance and a bit of (strictly tongue in cheek) gravitas.

A side note on the names paint manufacturers give to colors. I used a national brand of acrylic craft paint on this project and if you can believe it they called this particular green: Apple Orchard. Apple Orchard, mind you, Apple Orchard; where is the hypothetical orchard this color came from? The Altered States of Drugachusetts*??

*Yes, I’ll admit it. I’m a huge Mr. Show fan and will watch very nearly anything (even if it’s otherwise rather sucky) if David Cross is in it.