Pull Up a Chair:

an art exhibit inviting you to have a conversation

Curated by Sandra Davis

This exhibition was presented live in Washington, D.C. from Nov. 5 - Dec. 17, 2022

~ Although “Pull Up a Chair” has officially closed, this featured page will be available for the time being ~

This is it, everyone! I've been energized for months by this special exhibition that invites community conversation. Some shows really speak, and this is one of them -- literally. Come speak to us through the stories told in our chairs. Come sit with these stories and speak to each other about life and what moves you. Communication is the thread in our world's quilt. Let's talk!

"Pull Up a Chair" is generously hosted by the F.H. Faunteroy Community Enrichment Center, located in a residential neighborhood of D.C. It is an excellent opportunity to spotlight the important work being done every day at the community level. Art knows no barriers, so let us all converse and learn together.

Artist’s Statement

about my contribution to “Pull Up a Chair”

This is the story of “Eve’s Lullaby,” an artwork by Juliet Drake Hossain.

Carrying my first child was a personal paradigm shift. I, the singular, had become a plural “we.” Preparation was everything, and yet nothing could prepare us for the depth of the moments to come. During our making ready time, this gliding rocking chair was one of the first twigs we placed in our nest. It, too, transformed, from a piece of retail merchandise to a place for our souls to sit. I sang and read to my babies in this chair before they were even born. Then, when they were on the outside, this was where we nursed. This was where we rocked to sleep – me included, on some exhausted afternoons and more than a few long nights. This is where I learned that “I” had always been “we,” and would never be fully “I” again. Rocking together in this chair, we reached down into the unconscious parts of living: these myriad parts that happen when matter becomes life and moves on its own.  The parts that we inherit from those who came before and came before and came before, through millennia of our species, down the great splitting branches of the tree of life. As we rock our screaming, stinky, insatiable, demanding, wiggly, warm, soft, cooing, buttery, precious, perfect little babies and wonder with confusion what we’re supposed to do with them, we still have some vague idea of it all. Because we’ve been that little thing we now rock; our mothers were that little thing, too, and not so long ago our mothers’ grandmothers’ great-grandmothers were doing all of this. Not in a walled house, but in nature. Nature was the nursery that mothered us. Time moves in one direction but genetic memory does not.  Deep in our genes are the same survival instincts, adaptive traits and social compulsions that helped our species swaddle the Earth. As the self-centered toddler tosses and tantrums, so too do we mistreat our mother nursery. Perhaps we are teenagers now. She has given her adolescents the keys to the car and can only hope we don’t wreck. Perhaps she is sending us off to college, like giving birth to us all over again as we propel ourselves to the stars. All of these things I wonder about in the glinting eyes of my newborn as we bond skin to skin, breath to breath. Who are we but a continuance?

Here are some preview pics I snapped during setup. All of the participating artists are remarkable voices, so please come out to experience them all in person!

For this piece I used acrylic on strategically sanded wood, jute, rock, acrylic sheet, plaster and paper mache, as well as resin, embroidery floss, cotton cord, driftwood, time pieces, sand, shells, model landscaping material, and a transformed floor lamp, amongst other things.