By Rebecca Leon and Mary Scott

Volume 67, Issue I

If you’ve been around school, you may have seen the funky chairs covered with paintings. You might recognize them from the old library. But these chairs all have a story behind them.

The mastermind behind the chairs’ redesign is Dr. Linville, one of the high school’s art teachers. At the end of the school year, Ms. McCabe approached Dr. Linville and asked her if she would give the chairs in the library a revamp. Linville thought

this was the perfect task for her sculpture and ceramics class and asked them to contribute. She found inspiration in literature. “You could pick a book from any point in your life. So whether it was a book that you read when you were little or a book that you had read last week, it didn’t matter.” From the Hobbit, to Alice in Wonderland, each artist chose their book and portrayed it on every s
urface of the chair; a point Dr. Linville stressed greatly. Due to recent renovations in the library, all of the chairs had to be relocated. “We were looking for new homes for them,” said Dr. Linville. If you’re curious, you can find the seven chairs in the Maresca, the library, each guidance office, and Dr. Brown’s room.

Mrs. Carnahan caught wind of the chairs and was extremely interested in bringing the ideas into her classroom. “The idea of bringing history alive through art is so exciting to me. My hope is for my students to see the connection between the two disciplines [art and history].” This year’s assignment for Linville’s class is to design a chair based on historical time periods and decades. Carnahan hopes that these chairs will inspire her students.

Though there was no room for the chairs in the library, Linville believes that they still managed to leave their mark on the school. “I think it’s a nice experience to be able to do something that becomes a part of the school. On the other hand, sometimes that’s why people don’t want to do it, because they don’t want to put all that work into it and not have it. Are you the kind of person who can do something that might be one of the best pieces you’ve done and you’re going to leave it behind?”