CHAIRFUL - THE FINAL WEEK

Halla Hannesdottir is currently the Resident Armchair Artist at The Beaney in Canterbury. 

Hello again!
This was my last week at the Beaney as well as in Canterbury as I will be leaving to go back home to Iceland soon. I have had such a great experience here – both at the museum and in the city, everyone has been so welcoming!

During my last week here in Canterbury I gathered all the submitted Chairful drawings and started adding to the miniature collection. I cannot tell you how pleased I was with the amount of drawings I received! Nearly 70 drawings in total, with the most inventive and wonderful designs submitted by both adults and children.

I knew from the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to make all the drawings into miniatures – but it was really hard sorting them out and choosing which ones to make. My main aim was to try and show the variation of the designs and show how different they are. The interpretations from the drawings were primarily made in balsa wood and clay. I had decided to keep the materials the same as they would look better as a collection.

It was great to see plenty of different drawings with special functions for the chairs, such as:

• a chair with a drawer on the bottom to use as a foot rest
• a chair with binoculars placed right before your eyes
• two Chairs back to back attached with train set tracks

And some of the drawings were so inventive that my skills were not competent enough to make them – Chairs with engines and gadgets!

The final pieces, which added up to around 30 models were displayed at the Beaney last Tuesday as well as the drawings. As I said before I was really happy with the amount of interest in the project! I think scale is such an interesting subject and the miniature makes it quite accessible for both children and adults to get involved. For those who have passion for the miniature I encourage you to look at some ‘do it yourself’ project online or find some tutorial books. I have also found the most amazing miniature videos on youtube that anyone could easily get lost in. My favourites are called Miniature Space which involves a lot of cooking, like making pancakes on a miniature stove! And another one is SugarCharmShop  with an artist making the most amazing miniature things out of clay – the food channel is my personal favourite.

I hope you enjoy! My next blog will be written from Iceland, it will be my final one so I am going to share with you some of the items in the Beaney’s collection that were the inspiration for my Chairful Project. Until then!