For this project, we were asked to synthesize a personal story with the main concept of an art movement to create a thesis, or guiding concept for our chair. My chair is influenced mainly by loss and the idea that: processing the chaos that surrounds us, allows us to find clarity and meaning in things that once left us lost.

I used the ideas of chaos and order to guide my design. In our day-to-day lives, we tend to see chaos as "unalike" objects or a "disordered" workspace and order purely as organization. Looking to nature, however, we see order in complete objects like a whole flower with all its petals, as opposed to a bunch of flower petals lined up in a row.

Despite the chair not being a complete circle, the brain still recognizes it as circle. This is a phenomenon explained by gestalt psychology. We, as humans, see a full object even if there is a break or gap in the object. Processing this object allows us to see it as a whole and find order in the chaos.

On a similar note, when we lose someone, a piece of us goes missing as well. It takes time and healing to feel whole again. Just like in gestalt psychology, a piece of us may be missing after experiencing loss, but we’ll always be whole again.

I met a few challenges trying to synthesize something as personal as loss with an art movement, then turn around and use it as a concept for a chair. After working at it, I was able to come up with a final project that i am proud of, and has been well received by those it has been presented to.