Project Chaboo: All-Star Artist/Designer Collaboration

This is the blank slate. Ken Tomita’s low bench called the Chabu, after the low Japanese table, the chabudai, around which the family gathers. Looking for a way to get to know other designers and artists, as well as generate interest in his and their work, Tomita issued an invitation to a handful of designers and artists: to customize his chabu.

Emily Knudsen for Project Chaboo. detail. photo: Anna Campbell

The new piece would be called a “chaboo,” the double-o’s a nod to the original material used for the bench. Project Chaboo then meant a furniture design/builder creating an interpretation of the chaboo from scratch based on Tomita’s design, or Tomita building half of it for a metal worker who would built the other half, or Tomita building a chaboo for an artist like Amy Ruppel to customize (he built dozens for the show). From the first invitees, Tomita received more recommendations for participants. Eventually, more than 50 chaboos would be created by makers coming from architecture, interior design, photography, fine art, illustration, graphic design, carpentry, engineering, industrial design, as well as furniture design. The chaboo would be painted, pierced, knit. It would serve as a canvas, an armature for sculpture. It would grow legs, get bent, and sprout live plants.

Can’t wait to see work by some really intriguing makers like furniture maker Sara Huston, interior designer Lisa Kuhnhausen, furniture designer Joel Wakeman, textile/accessories designer Erin Albin of Appetite, and art-duo APAK (Aaron+Ayumi Piland). Oh, and David Butts’ walking chaboo.

Don Jensen for Project Chaboo. detail. photo: Anna Campbell

And the project didn’t stop there. Tomita then arranged photoshoots of not only the pieces, but the makers with their chaboos in a stunning series of portraits by photographers Anna Campbell, Alleh Lindquist, Joe Mansfield, and Jamen Lee. Then he and his brother, Yuji, built a beautiful website that features all of the chaboos, photos of the makers, and profiles and a few portfolio shots from each participant. What results is not only great and intriguing work, but a chance to get to know a great slice in cross section of Portland’s creative community, folks whose work you typically won’t see at First Thursday, whose work isn’t in the papers.

Brendan Budge for Project Chaboo. detail. photo: Anna Campbell

Best of all, the results of Project Chaboo will be on display at a party this Wednesday March 4 from 6-10 PM at GALLERY HOMELAND at The Ford Building, (SE 11th and Division). And by the results, I mean the chaboos, the photos, the stories of the people who answered Tomita’s invitation to customize a chaboo. Tomita tells me the exhibition design itself, by Lisa Kuhnhausen and Emily Knudsen, is something to see.

See and interview I did with Ken about the project for portlandspaces.net/blog/the-design-district.

POSTED: March 2nd, 2009 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: design | TAGS: art, design, furniture, gallery homeland, lisa kuhnhausen | No Comments »

---