Last year I applied to take part in the Cabinet Oak Project, and was chosen as one of the artists to receive a piece of wood and create an artwork.
A magnificent Live Oak tree stands in front of LBJ’s large ranch house outside of Stonewall, Texas in the Lyndon B Johnson National Historical Park. A couple of years ago a thunderstorm swept across the ranch, bringing high winds which caused a large portion of the ancient tree to break and fall. The tree has hosted dignitaries and councilors and potentates under its branches and was given the title ‘The Cabinet Oak’ because President Johnson would also hold cabinet meetings in its welcome shade.
Sections of the fallen branches were given to a chosen group of artists to create artwork that would be auctioned, to raise funds for conservation work.
As soon as I heard about the Cabinet Oak project, and saw the tree, I wanted to create an artwork focusing on the chairs that LBJ and his friends/colleagues used to sit in, underneath the branches.
I researched all the existing images of the period when LBJ resided in the house, collecting pictures of all the different chairs that existed and were used at that time. I even found some grainy black and white film footage of an interview where LBJ and Lady Bird showed a reporter around the ranch, and some colourful home videos.
I sourced as many pictures of chairs around the property as I could, and then sketched all the different types.
For my artwork, I started by getting the log I had been sent cut into slices. I then removed the rough outer bark. I sanded down all the surfaces, hoping to be able to carve and print from the flat surface areas. I planned to create some woodblock prints of chairs carved from the circular rounds of wood.
I carved one piece, and printed it with sumi ink, but because I couldn't get the surface of the wood to be totally smooth and flat, the carving didn't contrast particularly well when it was printed, and there was just too much surface texture.
I then decided to try using a stencil technique and cut out silhouettes of the chairs and inked up the wood surfaces and printed some versions like this. I was aiming for a crisp white image of the chair, against the grain of the wood.
It sort of worked, but still wasn't quite what I was looking for. I was trying to create an image that was like a memory, or ghost, of a chair, as if the wood itself remembered the chairs being there in its shade. But my prints were turning out too vague.
The stencils themselves however, that I had used in the process, turned out surprisingly beautifully, with the grain of the wood and fine details printed onto the reverse side. So I did a sort of chin-collé series with them as an experiment, and made small individual test pieces. This gave me the idea for how my final piece could ultimately be made.
I made prints from the sides of the wood slices, where the woodgrain wasn't rings and lines, but swirling grain, and made chair cut-outs using these printed papers, to ultimately create a series of collages.
I placed the cut-out shapes of chairs onto a large sheet of washi paper, and experimented with positioning.
I arranged the chairs into conversational groups, to capture the easy flow of ideas that seemed to be happening while LBJ was sitting outside with his friends and colleagues.
I partially glued the chairs down with rice paste in a variety of compositions: as time goes by, hopefully certain parts of the chairs will lift slightly. I would like some light to be able shine around and through the chairs, creating shadows to create an effect like sunlight through the leaves of a tree. I want the chairs to retain just a hint of 3-dimensionality.
These are some images of close-up details where you can see the slight shadows on the paper where the paper isn’t totally glued down.
The largest of the artworks is titled Conversations I, and while not an exact replica, references the famous photograph of LBJ and his colleagues underneath the Cabinet Oak.
I also made several other smaller versions with fewer chairs in each using this same technique.
I’d like the chairs in my artwork to evoke memories of a time when the tree overheard all sorts of conversations that happened underneath it. There’s a physical element to the layers of the collage, a printed element in the texture and pattern of the wood on the paper shapes, and hopefully a slightly wistful feeling of times gone by.
Some of the artworks will be exhibited and auctioned at a live event. All other work created will be available through online auction. I’ll put up a link to that when I have it. A gallery of the art in the project can be seen here.