This guy’s life

It takes 15 average-size steps to walk from one end of it to the other. Fifteen steps that comprise a lifetime.

Like somebody’s life, you almost don’t notice Nicholas Van Woert’s sculpture-installation piece “He Knew What He Wanted to Be” when you walk into Sierra Arts Gallery. The piece is in the center of the room, and it isn’t anything extraordinary on first glance. For how monumental it is, it’s easily overlooked. It isn’t until a person walks around the gallery a bit that they notice the array of chairs and junk that represent the infant, schoolboy, white-collar worker, senior citizen and debilitated elder named J.C.

Five chairs face the same direction, like the evolution diagram of man. They are the seats we all sit in.

“At first, I came up with the idea of making a diagram of a generic human life through the chairs we sit on,” Van Woert says. “I got the chairs, and then there was the matter of the detail. In order to have some consistency, I started to focus on who this guy was. In the end it’s supposed to be all of us.”

The first seat is a stroller. It’s made of blue corduroy, with a diaper bag hanging across the handle. There are bottles of milk on the floor. Two stuffed bunny rabbits and a blankie occupy the lonely buggy.

The next chair is a wooden school desk, home to a proud pile of chewed gum. Silly Putty, math cards, books and loose papers fall from the cubby space beneath the chair. A camouflage backpack hangs behind the seat, packed with an issue of Boy’s Life magazine, notebooks and a recorder—the instrument we all had to play in fourth or fifth grade. A folded note with the initials “J.C.” rests on the floor.

The next seat is the most depressing of them all. It’s at the center of the exhibit and occupies the most space. A vast metal office desk stretches out before a semi-comfortable-looking chair. A cup of coffee sits on the desk, ringed around the inside from evaporation. The mug is in line with a red Sharpie marker and a box of Marlboro Lights.

“Rumor has it that Marlboro Lights are a global brand of cigarette,” Nick says of why he chose that particular brand. “Everyone everywhere knows about them. It was an attempt to reach more people.”

The desk is also home to an oversized office calendar. Day after day has been slashed out with red pen, like a countdown to some great event, possibly death. A copy of Making Your Family Life Happy lays facedown next to the calendar.

The next chair is a worn blue Naugahyde recliner, one broken corner of which rests on the Holy Bible.

Then there’s the wheelchair, the oxygen tank, the pills—Zyban, Prozac—and the food and water dish. A person has died and now there’s a pet.

Last, there’s the dirt and the massive weight-bearing column (part of the Sierra Arts building) that almost looks like a colossal tombstone.

J.C.'s life was about sitting, and his seats make a person question whether or not their life is about staying on their ass, too. Each of the five chairs feels oppressive in its own way. The stroller, by its nature, is limiting, as is the wheelchair. The school and work desks are overbearing—threads in the fabric of our social institutions that don’t impart the freedom that joblessness and a lack of public education can. The recliner isn’t as restrictive as the others, but it’s just as hard to get out of, as it contains a remote control, a pint of Jack Daniels and a box of pills.

“The first question I asked myself is, what’s important and how can this piece make an impact?" Van Woert says. "I wanted to address important things, like life … I mean, what else is there. I didn’t want to be idiosyncratic in any way, though. I feel like people should get it. You can respond to [my piece] much more like a film. You identify with people in a film, and you respond to that."