Grand stands

Whimsical furniture takes a seat at Rosenblum

by Leon Nigrosh

OBJECTS FOR EVERYDAY LIVING By Johanna Evans and Robert March at Neal Rosenblum Goldsmiths/Designers, 261 Park Avenue, through December 2.

Mixed-media artist Johanna Evans and woodworker Robert March have spent the past six months attempting to combine the funky with the functional to produce a series of wall pieces and furniture items with a whimsical flair. The 15 objects currently on display at Neal Rosenblum Goldsmiths/ Designers are not only delights for the eye -- but they are eminently usable and comfortable.

For 10 years Evans and March worked in their separate departments under the roof of the Worcester Center for Crafts. Recently, after Evans left to develop her own line of hand-woven and vintage fabric objects, she was searching for a way to mount her unframed wall collages. Not having the appropriate carpentry skills, she contacted March to see if he could help out. Discussion ensued and they ended up writing a grant proposal to the Worcester Cultural Commission to enable them to produce and show their collaborative efforts. An important part of such a proposal stipulates that there must be some benefit to the community at large. To satisfy this requirement, the artists approached Rosenblum, who in turn let them mount their exhibit in his Park Avenue store.

What makes this collaboration even more interesting is that each of the artists drew new insights from the other. Evans became involved in developing the structural integrity of the stools, and March got caught up in the primitive and folksy aspect required in the presentation of Evans's wall works. For the collage Let's Eat, Evans, in her usual manner, arranged little white petits fours with assorted trinkets and a pink glove on a stretch of tan packing sheet to create a feeling of nostalgia for earlier times. March surrounded this work with a specially constructed shadow-box frame treated in a faux crackle finish -- a technique he was trying for the first time. Old postage stamps, vintage buttons, and a ticket to Kiddie Land are highlighted in Splendid Things To Treasure #3, all of which are encased in a wooden frame decorated with blue milk paint and wavy hand-carved lines (two more firsts for March). The development of some of the wall pieces relied a great deal on serendipity. Speed Away. Sail Away. came from the name printed on an old sled scheduled for the dumpster. Evans arranged three vintage boat postcards and a series of antique buttons in a pattern reminiscent of boating flags, and March then framed this work with the rejuvenated sled boards.

The real eyecatchers in this exhibit are the bandy three- and four-legged stools. They provide ample evidence of the just plain fun these artists had in putting their heads together. While most of the stools, like Please Be Seated (the title is stitched right into the seat covering) and Big Red, have hand-felted coverings molded directly onto the seat, the situation is reversed in Could Be a Stool where the legs are felted in rich colors and the plain wood seat is decorated with an array of antique buttons. The most intriguing, and certainly the most challenging, stool is a tripod with a hole in the seat and a silk and rayon bag hanging beneath. The stool comes with a set of six felted balls, and the object (when you're not sitting on it) is to see how many balls you can throw through the hole into the bag. This one was obviously a product of too many late nights.

Questioned about the durability of the felting process, both Evens and March grabbed up colorful felted spheres with imbedded phrases like "Play Ball" and "Have a Ball, Enjoy Oneself" and immediately started bouncing them around the floor of the store -- their faces transfixed with childlike grins. n

The store is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 755-4244.