Endlessly Rocking

I am involved in a fundraiser for the local art association, which takes place this Sunday. In this instance the fundraiser takes the form of a chair auction, in which each artist receives a chair to refinish or restore, usually artistically. The chair can be functional as a chair, or it can be deconstructed completely and end up bearing no resemblance at all to anything one could sit on.

I received only an interesting chair fragment for the chair auction. Immediately I thought I should do a wall piece in assemblage form. The stanzas from Walt Whitman's poem, “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” kept coming to mind. I determined to make a piece essentially illustrating this poem. The three main characters in the poem are a young boy, and a mockingbird. The Sea is also a character which communicates a message in the poem. The bird nests with its mate on a beach on Long Island, which Whitman always referred to as its Indian name of Paumanok.

The fragment of chair I received was the back of the chair with legs. I scavenged an old wooden rocking horse for parts such as the rockers and the head of the horse, because a chair can also have rockers, and I attached them to the chair. Therefore, there was a connection between the chair as a rocking chair and the childhood toy as a rocking horse. So one could see the beginning and end of life as well, I thought.

In the course of the poem, one day the female of the pair fails to return to the nest and is lost forever. The plaintive calls of the male and the sense of loss in his song cause the boy to wish to learn to be able to communicate this loss, and all losses, to others in the form of poetry. It is a coming-of-age poem.

In order to make the chair into an illustration of the poem, I carved a bird from basswood and gilded it with 22k gold leaf. The bird perches on one of the rockers.

The young boy is painted into a “window” in the back of the chair.

And the Sea is depicted as all around, endlessly rocking, and endlessly whispering.

Bidding begins at only $35.-

I include a link to, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking , for your pleasure.