I was lucky to participate in The Albany Barn‘s 2019 Chair Show in partnership with Nine Pin Cider. I was given one of the original desks from when the building the Albany Barn is housed in was St. Joeseph’s Academy to transform with absolute artistic freedom.
I was inspired by the shape of the desk and the flow of the metal from the seat to the arm to turn it into a mermaid tail. I used chicken wire to create structure of the tail. It’s light weight and allowed me to weave various materials through the holes. Scraps of ribbon, zipper, clothes, vinyl, leather, and aluminum can were used to weave. The fins were painted on using acrylics and glitter mixed with dish grade modpodge. High traffic areas of the woven sections were covered with vinyl. The following photographs are of the transformation and the finished desk.
P.S.–The gorgeous tuxedo in the pictures is Tilly. We adopted her from APF when she was about 2 years old. Her favorite things to play with are the materials I used, so she showed remarkable restraint while I flopped and dangled little scraps around. She’s a real class act!
