Left in a Ladybug Garden
Created for: CircleSeats Year One at CircleFest 2006
Created by: James H. Turban
When I first heard of this project my concept was pre-determined during my own childhood. It would not have mattered what chair I chose the idea of what I was to do with it was already set in stone. In the deep recesses of my mind a wondrous image of intense clarity has waited to be recalled.
As a child 11-12 years of age, I sat and listened to a conversation between my mother and an aunt about a neighbor of my aunt’s. The neighbor was an elderly woman who lived alone in a house with several unused bedrooms. The conversation was about what was discovered in one of the long ignored bedrooms recently opened after the passing of the elderly neighbor.
My aunt was named executrix of the neighbor’s estate, while inventorying the neighbor’s house, my aunt entered a bedroom that had been closed up and ignored for decades. The room was fully furnished with Victorian antiques. As a part of the bedroom suit was a mirrored vanity and a chair near a window.
Over the years the frame of the window had deteriorated which left gaps that were open to the outside of the house. Through the gaps in the window frame had grown numerous vines of English ivy, and over the years the ivy had covered the vanity, chair, surrounding walls, and floor.
The explicit details of the discovery of the ivy in the forgotten bedroom that were conveyed by my aunt, along with a well nurtured imagination of a child, instilled in me imagery of wondrous clarity. A room and furniture that looked as though it had been created by only ivy. Like so many animal shaped ivy and shrub topiaries I had seen as a child.
The fact that CirclSeats is for the benefit of the children and their school, I felt my concept based on my own childhood memory of the ivy room, had come full circle, no pun intended. So I wanted to create forms and imagery that would relate to a child and a child’s imagination.
Using over five hundred feet of wire, all of the over two thousand individual pieces that make up my art work for the chair, were either full circles or a derivative or part of a circle. I believe this to be even more fitting for the project at hand.
I wanted to create a small sliver of the world that would be a world of it’s own, that held or hid individual details discovered from any angle or level in which the chair was viewed. Yet viewed in it’s entirety, everything would flow and combine as one entity.
I have enjoyed and been amazed by a few of my friends that have already viewed the chair on different occasions, having discovered something new and different each time they viewed the chair.
I hope the children of Circle School will have an opportunity to view my work of art that was created for them and to benefit them. It is also my hope that the chair will give them similar wondrous memories in their childhoods that may stay with them and come full circle for them in their adult lives.
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