A Safe Place for Chairs

Featured on Halogen TV's site!

2010-09-29T00:05:00.001+01:00

And another. Miss Chairish Wood is blushing :)

The article is here:

Turning Trash into Art: A Safe Place for Chairs
By Katie Noah Gibson

They’re on the curb in every city, especially on trash pickup days. They’re upholstered, varnished, wicker, painted, sometimes chipped and often unloved. They’re abandoned chairs, and they all tug at Moira Stevenson’s heart.
Stevenson, a Canadian artist now based in London, began collecting abandoned chairs and bringing them home a few years ago. After amassing more than 200 chairs and running out of space, she decided to start two new collections: one of chair photos turned into postcards or art prints, and one of animated short films telling stories of discarded chairs. She posts the chair photos (available as notecards, prints, postcards or free e-cards) at A Safe Place for Chairs and has posted several short films at Chairity Case. “Every chair is beautiful,” Stevenson says on the Chairity Case blog.
Matt Cahill, a Toronto photographer, agreed. He began noticing and photographing discarded chairs on the streets of Toronto last year, then encouraged others to do the same. Cahill now has a Flickr set of “Conversations with Abandoned Chairs,” all taken with his cell phone camera. He describes the project as not quite journalism and not quite art, and enjoys the challenge of capturing each chair’s essence without the use of professional equipment.
We’ve all heard the adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” – but both Cahill and Stevenson have turned one man’s trash into everyone’s piece of art.

View article on Halogen here: http://halogentv.com/articles/turning-trash-into-art-a-safe-place-for-chairs/

Featured on Treehugger.com

2010-09-28T23:45:00.003+01:00

Wow! I can't believe my project has been written up again! This time it's on Treehugger!

Abandoned Chairs Get an Artistic Home
By Bonnie Alter

There is something so forlorn and sad about a chair abandoned on the roadside. Innocent and sometimes beautiful, it is hard to resist taking them home and giving them a reason to live again.

Some artists have been having the same problem. Moira Stevenson had filled up her Toronto front porch with rescued chairs until she had no more room. Her solution was photography: she photographs them before in their naked state. Then she turns the photos into art, giving the chairs the setting they deserve, and makes them into a print or postcard.

Stevenson has collected her chairs in Toronto: over 200 of them in the downtown residential areas. She has been seeking out London's rejects and photographing them, whilst working there.

She has also created animated shorts about junked chairs coming alive and getting their last wish. Called Chairity Case, she invents a charming story about lost chairs and makes an animated short about them fulfilling their dream, complete with music and animation.

Read the article in it's entirety here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/09/abandoned-chairs-artistic-home.php

Featured in The Toronto Star!

2010-09-17T12:21:00.006+01:00

Following my post about Ellen Moorhouses's article "Trash talk: Forsaken chairs find virtual home" she has written another – and this time me and my blog are featured! Read it below or click here: http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/green/article/849427--new-look-at-hst-free-goodwill

Artful Trash
There’s something about chairs put out in the garbage that inspires emotion and concern. After the Aug. 7 Trash Talk about Matt Cahill and his Conversations with Abandoned Chairs project, in which he photographs discarded seats and posts them online, than we heard about graphic designer Moira Stevenson.
She had filled up her Toronto porch with rescued chairs until she had no more room. At that point she turned to photography and art to honour these trashed souls. She posts images on her blog “A Safe Place for Chairs”, where she enhances the images, giving chairs the settings she thinks they deserve, even as they languish somewhere in landfill.
She has also created animated shorts about junked chairs coming alive and getting their last wish (www.chairitycase.blogspot.com). Formally of Toronto’s Little Italy and Queen West, Stevenson is now working in the film industry overseas in London, a city of flats, where she laments that junked chairs rarely appear on the streets, ending up instead in dumpsters at the rear of buildings.

Thanks so much for the kind words Ellen!

On another note, 15 chairs have recently been added to my collection and are currently being designed. As well, my third short video is in the works. Hopefully I'll *finally* have a new entry soon!

x

Other Chair Lovers Exist!

2010-08-09T00:12:00.004+01:00

Thanks to my friend Mitch for sending this great article! Although, it's kind of freaky that the artist's collection contains some of the chairs I've also taken pictures of! Read here:

http://www.yourhome.ca/homes/green/article/844457--trash-talk-forsaken-chairs-find-virtual-home

It's so sad I haven't had time to update my blog in forever! But to tide you over why not click here and see the chairs in their naked glory pre my beautification project! I hope you enjoy as much as I do!

xo

Forgotten no more!

2010-06-01T20:26:00.003+01:00

My chairs are famous! Check out the call-out to my Abandoned Chairs blog on the HGTV site: http://tinyurl.com/3yrw2g7

By the way! So eager to get working on beautifying the many lovely chair pictures I've collected. I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted!

Found: Broadway Market, London, UK

2010-01-09T20:08:00.004Z

Found: Hackney, London, UK

2009-12-23T13:50:00.002Z

Found: Camden Market, London, UK.

2009-12-19T17:58:00.000Z

Found: Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-10-12T14:44:00.002+01:00

Found: Little Portugal, Toronto, Canada

2009-10-04T16:50:00.004+01:00

Found: Little Portugal, Toronto, Canada

2009-10-02T15:15:00.000+01:00

Found: The Annex, Toronto, Canada

2009-09-03T00:36:00.002+01:00

Found: Liberty Village, Toronto, Canada

2009-08-29T14:10:00.000+01:00

Found: King West, Toronto, Canada.

2009-08-22T14:27:00.000+01:00

Found: Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-08-22T10:19:00.001+01:00

Found: King West, Toronto, Canada

2009-08-11T13:52:00.001+01:00

Found: Kensington Market, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-12T17:59:00.003+01:00

Found Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-12T15:37:00.008+01:00

Found: Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-10T16:37:00.002+01:00

Found: Trinity Bellwoods, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-09T12:42:00.002+01:00

Found: Little Italy, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-07T19:19:00.004+01:00

Found: Little Italy, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-06T13:17:00.001+01:00

Found: Little Italy, Toronto, Canada

2009-07-01T12:55:00.001+01:00

Found: Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-06-07T16:13:00.001+01:00

Found: Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-06-02T13:07:00.006+01:00

Found: Little Italy, Toronto, Canada

2009-06-01T14:20:00.005+01:00

Found: Little Italy, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-30T11:29:00.005+01:00

Found: Queen West, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-28T12:41:00.003+01:00

Found: Little Italy, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-27T19:13:00.002+01:00

Found: East Village, New York City, USA

2009-05-25T17:53:00.003+01:00

Found: Trinity Bellwoods, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-25T12:14:00.001+01:00

Found: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, USA

2009-05-22T12:22:00.001+01:00

Found: North York, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-08T18:18:00.001+01:00

Found: Trinity Bellwoods, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-05T16:52:00.001+01:00

Found: Trinity Bellwoods, Toronto, Canada

2009-05-04T11:46:00.001+01:00