Van Gogh’s Moveable Feast
What I learned about community by studying Van Gogh’s chair
As an art teacher, empty chairs hold a special significance. I think of all the chairs in all the art rooms in all the schools I taught in over the years. Student occupants may have tumbled downstream and out the door, but the chairs remained steady rocks despite the constant coursing of time.
In my old Room 102, one chair had a Sharpie scribbled name–a remember-me talisman in the tradition of Kilroy Was Here. Another chair wobbled, probably from the countless kid-wiggles welded into its wooden soul. A third seat held a legendary scar, the deep nick made from a scissor mark or a spontaneous ruler duel.
Classroom chairs in schoolrooms everywhere are 3D canvases, with fundaments of gum and paint, and permanent marker patinas that serve in poignant contrast to the transient bodies that occupy them.
Back when I was a bartender, I noticed a similar trend. Chairs defined the patron. The seat in our bar by the vintage video game inevitably cradled a loner searching for a steady beep-ding. The stool by the restroom corridor clutched a chat-you-up type, hoping to snatch a smile upstream of the constant restroom to-and-fro. Corner stool customers were free-spirited stool-spinners with a three-sixty view and an oft-spilled drink. Though…
