Michael Gilmartin, Avos Chair, Maine Fir Plywood and Black Walnut

Dream Seats by Joan K. Smith
Highly imaginative high schoolers join seasoned veterans
at the 2001 furniture show

this article originally appeared in the April 19, 2001 issue of the Philadelphia City Paper

Dreamers flock to exhibitions like the Philadelphia Furniture and Furnishings Show (PFFS). Not just consumers seeking the perfect mahogany credenza, but visionary designers, the forward thinkers who cause those consumers to rethink what furniture can look like.

Designers like Michael Gilmartin, whose rugged Avos armchair reinterprets Adirondack chic in gorgeous swirls of fir and black walnut. Jeremy Dunklebarger, whose animated armchair with spiraled arms and back would make the perfect perch for a Disney wizard. And Benjamin Potts, whose chair is called "A Dying Dream" and takes its shape from his "vision of a man pressing up out of a chair, or breaking up and out of it."

Gilmartin and Dunklebarger are among the 250 juried professionals taking part in this year’s PFFS, which is in its seventh year and runs from April 20-22, 2001 at the Convention Center. Potts, on the other hand, is really living out a dream — he’s a high school student at Abington Friends, and his chair is one of 40 student entries in the second annual PFFS Student Awards for Excellence in Design.

Philadelphia furniture maker and PFFS Co-Director Bob Ingram sees a dire need in the secondary education system for encouragement of students with creative, spatial inclinations, for programs that offer options beyond the multiple-choice world of the video monitor. His commitment led to the student awards which, unlike most local high school art and design contests, asks for work in three dimensions. The competition gave no strict guidelines; students were asked only to create a three-dimensional object based upon the theme of "the chair," whether it be a miniature model or a full-scale prototype, practical or conceptual.

Ingram is delighted by this year’s group: "It’s totally amazing in the energy the kids bring to this, and the quality of the results they produce, plus the results they get out of the whole exchange of working with three-dimensional objects in the classroom." He says that many students, in actualizing their design, ended up seeking out new skills and techniques; one student whose work required welding found his way to a welder’s shop apprenticeship.

The 40 entries, which came from 19 area schools, represent a full gamut of creative inclination.

One of the more fanciful designs comes from Marlena Marinita, freshman from Reading High School. Her chair model is a pom-pommed, antennaed piece of whimsy in bright green & yellow — if a Teletubby needed a boudoir chair, this would be it. On the other end of the spectrum, Emily Donati of Princeton High School designed a full-scale bench of cinderblock, cement and brick, with live grass growing out of three compartments on the top.

In fact, many of the students have followed the current design trend by using industrial, recycled materials or found objects for their designs; most did this not in a jumbled happenstance way, but with careful consideration to function and aesthetics.
Tristan Gibbs of the Charter High School for Architecture & Design (CHAD) used all found materials for his design, mounting a director’s chair back and metal legs to a single wooden drawer unit. The drawer serves the double function of storage and portability: the back and legs are designed to be easily removed to fit inside the drawer. But in his statement Gibbs stresses that this is not a mere functional object: "The practicality of the chair does not take away from the art of the chair and the creative construction… while affordable and practical it still maintains an essence of art."

Another CHAD student, Roger Allen, not only designs a chair of recycled materials — metal from demolished buildings and medium density fiberboard, which comes from sawdust — but proposes a "zero waste manufacturing" concept called "Reuse Refuse." The chair he designed under these guidelines is a cleanly constructed (and highly professional-looking) slatted chair, intended to be both comfortable and "visually unobtrusive."

Although the CHAD entries are the most sophisticated in presentation and execution, there is no dearth of strong design from the non-arts related schools. Rajiv Jesudason of Central High School offers a design for a barbershop chair, observing that most barbershop chairs "needed a major upgrade." His goal was to make the entire shop more attractive without lessening the barber shop "feel," and he succeeded with a modern, streamlined chair design with a high-back white canted "c" base and a series of red cushions — the red and white reflecting the colors of a barberpole. Although his design is presented as a miniature model made of clay and polymers, one can easily visualize a full-scale rendering, perhaps in cast plastic and vinyl.

But lest we forget that there is a place in the world for pure non-functional expression, the two pieces from Abington Friends School students remind us. Both are dark, macabre (what’s in their water, anyway?), skillfully executed sculptural pieces, but with different messages.

Jenna Snyder-Phillips’ elaborate 16-inch ceramic chair already has an occupant, a "she-devil representing role reversal… demonstrating that a female can have evil powers." Her she-devil chair is supported by demon skulls and various other evocations of purgatory.

But it is Benjamin Potts’ "Dying Dream" that takes the cake. Potts, who’s a junior, began with his vision of a man "trying to break out of a mold." The result is a full-scale piece of pure expression — molded and painted fabric constructed around an antique chair base with scattered dead leaves at the base, the lap of the man (which Potts calls the "dream") forming a seat. At the top of the chair back is a head with glass eyes — real prosthetic eyes used for eyeless people –— streaming Oedipal tears over a life-like face. The overall impression is that of a Christ-less "Pieta."

Grim and dramatic, yes. However, Pott brings us back to earth by reminding us that he is still a high school student: "I simply thought the idea was cool."

And high school students are what this is all about — giving them opportunities to work with their hands to create something real, whether it be profound, analytical or simply cool.

Reproduced courtesy of the Philadelphia City Paper

Joan K. Smith is an artist, freelance writer, and Associate Director of InLiquid.com

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©2003 InLiquid.com; text ©2001 Joan K. Smith and the Philadelphia City Paper