"As I started the project for the Chair Affair, I decided to create a piece that drew from my reactions to our present day political climate. My work draws its inspiration and materials from nature. My art comes from plant fibers and colors from natural dyes. I have also incorporated the symbolic meanings of plants, flowers, colors, and objects.
I started with the chair donated by Barnabas - immediately wanting to transform it into a "vessel" of beauty. The woven chair seat was my initial inspiration and repurposing the seat to create my vessel structure - weaving my paper fibers - a symbol of how we are all intertwined, interconnected elements, the cycle of life.
Each element of the chair has a symbolic meaning: the vessel: rebirth, comforting, feminine; the plant fibers: grass, the fleeting quality of life, Iris the message; bamboo: strength; and cotton: hard work. Colors, all created naturally from either the color of fiber after it is cooked and processed or from natural dyes and Tibetan Prayer flags: white: purity, innocence, goodness, light, faith; green: water, harmony balance; blue: sky, peace, healing, purity; red: fire, living, forming, preservation; yellow: earth, rootedness. The flowers - peonies: good fortune, love, romance, compassion; the leaves: hope revival, fertility, growth, a beginning; milkweed pod: hope, angels, transformation, survival, caring for others; the snake skin: opposing meanings with deceptive, trickster, cunning, and transformation, move slowly, creative force; and finally, the feather: sky, collected realm, ascension, spiritual evolution.
Enjoy and think about how we are connected."

About the Artist: Gibby Waitzkin is a fiber artist, papermaker, and photographer whose education and training focused on photography, printmaking, and arts education. Her early involvement with political activism in the 60's centered around civil rights and environmental issues -- what we eat, drink and breathe -- and while living in Washington, DC she worked for over thirty-five years using her arts and design background on environmental, women's rights and arts issues. Gibby also founded Gibson Creative, an award-winning design and communications studio in Washington. Her work includes campaigns for the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Campaign, Gore for President 2000 identity, and the Pew Center on Climate Change.