Take A Seat!
Cassandra Holden

"Peacock Throne"
 

Northampton, MA

"Peacock Throne"

Artist's Statement

I make things: custom clothing, costumes, theatrical sets, and public art. During the past twenty years as a clothing designer, I’ve dressed actors and acrobats, brides and business women, dandies and dancers.

I am drawn to the process of collaborative art-making, especially to engaging with people who may not see themselves as artists. Over the last several years, I have had the privilege of working with groups of young women in Holyoke to create large-scale public projects: a site specific mobile, which flies in the atrium at the Kittredge Center at Holyoke Community College; and a giant illuminated butterfly puppet with a twenty foot wing span, which took flight along the canal as part La Noche De San Juan.

The best projects begin in uncertainty and evolve through experimentation and revision. The
final product is more intricate and nuanced than initially conceived.

This design challenge was compelling because of the questions that it raised: How can a chair be more than a functional object? What if the fabric is more than its skin?

A throne! Both the seat and the seated are transformed. Regal. Proud.

I invite you to try it. How does it make you feel?

Take a Seat!

40 local artists and designers creatively paint, decorate, cut, drill, and embellish 40 chairs. The exhibition culminates in a fundraising party and silent auction of the chairs on February 28, 2016. Exhibition runs January 27 – February 28, 2016

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