There are many places where you might expect to see an armchair: six meters underwater in the Bay of St. Margarets of Nova Scotia is not one of them.
And yet there it was: a miniature stone chair casually placed like an aquatic throne on the sandy ocean floor.
I wasn’t alone in my confusion: a passing fish, a Red Sea Crow, also stopped to inspect the strange sight. I took a picture and shared it with friends. Everyone in the diving community wanted to know where the chair was and who had put it there.
I was one of the first divers to find the chair, which turned out to be the work of artist Barbara Anne MacKintosh.
He created the sculpture as part of his work at NSCAD University in Halifax. It was carved from a single block of limestone, a project that took about 150 hours of labor. She modeled it on a doll chair she found at Value Village. He weighs about 36 kilos and is about one meter tall.
“I like the idea of making something that has such a specific purpose but couldn’t fulfill that purpose because of its size,” he said. “So just a redundant little article, but I thought it was pretty comical.”
Artist Barbara Anne MacKintosh spent about 150 hours carving the armchair sculpture out of limestone as part of her work at NSCAD University. The finished piece weighs about 36 kilos and is one meter tall. (Nicolas Winkler)
MacKintosh did not create the chair with the intention of sinking it. This idea came after he graduated in 2019. MacKintosh was returning to Alberta and holding the chair didn’t seem practical.
“Because of the weight, I knew it would be very expensive,” he said. “He must have weighed over 80 pounds. I could barely carry him.”
It was then that MacKintosh thought of his friends at the Halifax Freediving Club. She was one of Nova Scotia’s original freedivers.
It is a sport that consists of diving with a single breath. Experienced divers can stay underwater for several minutes.
Freedivers were delighted with MacKintosh’s suggestion to sink the chair like an underwater sculpture.
The freediving community is growing
Tara Lapointe is a member of the Halifax Freediving Club. She believes the chair will encourage people to explore the underwater world. (Nicolas Winkler)
Club member Tara Lapointe recalls the first photo she saw of the chair, which arrived without any sense of scale.
“I was imagining this huge, life-sized chair. And then I just thought, how are we going to get it out into the ocean? And then I found out how small it was, and I thought it was funny.”
Although the chair is small (about one meter high), it is heavy. It took four freedivers and an air-filled float to move the sculpture to its new home next to Paddy’s Head in March.
“We wanted it to be in an area where scuba divers frequented,” Lapointe said. “And when we felt we had the right area and our hands were numb enough, we decided to implant it.”
The chair sits not far from a collection of concrete reef balls installed nearly 20 years ago in hopes of encouraging lobsters to take up residence. It has not been very successful as a lobster habitat, but it is a popular underwater destination for scuba divers.
The reef balls are covered in seaweed as the ocean slowly takes over. The chair has only been in the water for a few months, but organisms are already starting to grow on it.
living art
A team of freedivers sank the sculpture to the bottom of the ocean floor. (Submitted by David Pate)
MacKintosh hasn’t seen her chair underwater yet, but she’s thrilled that nature has already claimed it.
“An armchair makes you think of home. I think it expresses that the ocean is also our home. We have such a big effect on the ocean. And we have a lot of responsibility to keep it healthy. And I just hope that people see it.”
Lapointe agrees. She believes the chair will encourage people to explore the underwater world. “It will be a living work of art. From something inert and just stone, we hope it will take on life as the years go by.”
Both MacKintosh and Lapointe hope the tiny chair will inspire the creation of something much bigger: an underwater sculpture park inspired by similar parks around the world that have proven popular destinations for traveling divers. “This would be a wonderful asset to Nova Scotia,” Lapointe said. “We are Canada’s ocean playground.”
Above all, MacKintosh wants her work to inspire joy and keep her connected to a place she loves.
“I really, really miss Halifax. So having the sculpture, it feels like a little piece of me is still in Halifax. That makes me very happy.”