Home
CHAIRS
The chairs were handed down to me from my grandparents Orin and Hattie Oaks. They were mostly broken, had some missing parts and were unusable. I stored them for most of my adult life with the intention of restoring them to their original condition: dark brown stain and black leather seat. However, I decided to restore the chairs in such a way that each one of my children could have one that would be modified to reflect their interest. I asked them what kinds of things they would like to have me incorporate into their chair. They gave me lots of ideas and thoughts on how to make the imagery and words personal and meaningful.
They all chose their own color leather seat.
The inlaid wood designs on the fronts of the back rest were my surreal touch and the carved reliefs were my idea. The carved tree is the Tree of Life as referenced in the Bible and the movie “The Fountain”. It is on each chair making the four chairs a cohesive dining room set.
My wife Deb also kept giving me ideas: steps, doorways and window locks. I included a song that she made up and used to sing to our children at bedtime: “Night night, sleep tight…” And the “ILY & ILY” is something that she has said to the kids since their early childhood and still ends our cards and notes to our children it means: “I Love You and I Like You”.
Underneath the seat of each chair is a framed note that describes where the chairs came from and includes the only lineage of my mother’s side of the family that I am aware of from research my uncle Orville Oaks did back in the 1970’s. The chairs are made of oak, functional and meaningful, these are what I call “Heirlooms”.
When each child was about 4 years old I made a small box for them. These represent their interests as children, the chairs their interests as adults.
For Benu: LEGO |
For Jonah: Baseball
For Steffan: Toy Cars |
For Skyler: Stuffed Animals
Benu has always been interested in computers (thus the embedded computer chip), the solar system and Egyptian symbolism. After the first day of Kindergarten he declared, “I’m not going to that school because they are not going to teach me to build a space ship!” And at 13 he was upset that NASA stole his idea to have a remote controlled rover on Mars. His name means the Phoenix which is a variation of The Bennu, an Egyptian crane symbolizing the beginning of life. He now goes by “The Benu”.
Jonah has a taste for good design and an interest in the symbolic infinity of Celtic designs, the band Disturbed and physics which of course includes the whole universe. The wood inlay accidentally turned out to look like a whale on top of a wave which relates to the Jonah and the whale Biblical story. He also wanted quotes that reference two favorite book series and an equation intended to make you contemplate some of life’s eternal questions.
Steffan is the Romantic who has an epic struggle with religion, love and music. I chose the Lorraine cross because that is my mother’s name and it was a cross often associated with the Christian Crusades. He originally resisted giving me ideas because symbolism can be so powerful and he wasn’t sure he wanted to commit to anything. He settled on Classical Greek designs. I added the phases of the moon (so much drama at night) and the planet Venus (goddess of love, passion and beauty).
Skyler likes all things water related and animals, especially otters. He asked that I include an image of the rose from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”, favorite tattoos (like the rings around an arm in “The Fountain”), some favorite quotes (the band Blue October), something steampunk and a reference to the group BTS. He also wanted his carved steps to be like an Escher design, therefore one set of steps upside down.
Backlinks
.