A Coffeetable is Work

1980; 2002

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“The Coffeetable” was dreamed up while watching a Bunuel movie. The physical part took nine months in the wood studio. It is my Surrealist masterpiece. I went to the library and researched furniture styles and came up with French Provincial to give it its fanciness.

This piece might be subtitled, "Surrealism Meets Fine Cabinetmaking," an extrapolation of the coffeetable into absurd inutility. The coffeetable has an interesting history, first created before I lost my sight, partially-destroyed (as was my vision), and then reborn. My vision has been reborn as well; I'm less familiar with well-traveled ways and now exploring a wilderness without tracks, difficult to decipher, but offering new ways of discovering what lies behind surfaces.

The coffeetable is carefully prearranged with magazines, books, even an album of photographic memories carved out of the sensuous mahogany, but all completely inaccessible other than to the touch of a hand. There are no words in the books or magazines, no image seen in the photographs. A tiny simulacrum of the table itself lies upon the surface, serving as a sly reference to the coffeetable as an object of art suitable for display, but not for use.

The coffeetable is poised on bronze baby doll hands clutching balls in the French Provincial style, but one ball has escaped and the bronze hand stretches out to grasp it, just beyond reach, leaving the table on the brink of stumbling.

© Alison Ulman 2001