BroadWay Armchair by Boris Bally

It might be easy to dismiss the work of Boris Bally with a simple ,”Oh yeah, he does that recycled traffic sign stuff”. But a closer look at his work, particularly his new “Broadway Armchair” reveals the hand and eye of a sophisticated artist. He manages to marry familiar quotidian imagery with artful sculptural forms. Michael Monroe was led to claim, “An attraction to the bold graphics of discarded highway signage inspired Boris Bally to collect, recycle, and fabricate furniture of great wit and distinction. His chairs – with fragmented words, symbols and arrows splashed across their surfaces – seem to symbolize urban grit and rhythms.” I couldn’t have said it better myself!

Middlebury Chair Lavender/Green
Mary Lynn O’Shea
Photo by Glenn Moody

Shorter days and cooler nights have a visceral effect on my behavior. I find myself searching my bookshelves for long, thoughtful books that absolutely require a good reading light and a cozy chair. One of Mary Lynn O’Shea’s chairs, for instance.

We project our moods and personalities by the chairs we sit in. In one mood a big, fat chair is just right; in another mood, a rocking chair. Our purposes for sitting are often very different. People sit back and muse; people sit formally waiting for dinner to be served.

It would be great fun to have a room filled with chairs, all slightly different, as this would immediately create an atmosphere of rich experience, moods, and personalities. This sounds like my own group of close women-friends – each one has a very different character deserving of her own, unique chair!

My Friend’s Friend
Dean Pulver
Photo by Pat Pollard

Chairs are the most intimate of objects. They support our bodies and express our personalities. The chair focuses our associations with the natural and the domestic, speaking concisely and elegantly of life and how it is lived.

The Guild represents a number of furniture makers who create chairs, and a quick survey of these chairs determines that every one of them displays the thoughtfulness and eloquence of the maker. But recently, we added this chair by New Mexico artist Dean Pulver, and I thought, once again, that a furniture maker has succeeded in creating an exciting new aesthetic with this timeless object.

Or, should I say, an exciting old/new aesthetic. Because Pulver’s design recalls distant drums and beckons one to sit close to the earth in its low seat. Last year, Pulver told me that he felt as if he was moving backwards, so to speak, as he was using fewer power tools – all because hand-tooling helped him better express his ideas in his work.

Dean Pulver’s chair has become a metaphor for life and art, taking advantage of the object’s potential for moving beyond functionality.