06/01/2019
StumpChair featured in a show running currently at the Center For Art in Wood at Philadelphia. The Center for Art in Wood
Exhibition Highlight: “StumpChair” is a video memo of Coby Unger’s StumpChair action, an ongoing guerrilla project that repurposes abandoned furniture to create public seating from tree stumps. The project, which has taken place in a number of East Coast cities (including Philadelphia), is a form of community engagement and a stunt aimed at raising awareness of the importance of trees in urban and rural areas. Filmed in snapshots, the video is the result of a collaboration between longtime friends. It uses the moving image to convey the impetus behind the StumpChair actions, building in the viewer a sense of empathy for trees – a treasured source of material for Unger, a woodworker and furniture maker – and a sense of urgency for the stewardship and conservation of this critical natural resource.
Coby Unger’s video is on view with the video work of nine other makers in our current exhibition "Moving Image Matters: Documenting and Preforming Craft in Video," now through July 20. This image, courtesy of the artist, is of Unger’s "Stump Chairs" piece, commissioned by Smith Memorial Playground & Playhouse in Philadelphia, PA.
