Porcelain and ceramic dishware

I came of age during a time of dramatic upheaval in the ongoing evolution of gender equality. On the nightly news, women burned bras in defiance of social norms, while in my daily life those norms were expressed as practical advice: Why buy the cow when the milk is free? It’s as easy to love a rich man as a poor!

A set of plates featuring the Charles Dana Gibson illustrations from “A Widow and Her Friends” inspired a mosaics series that attempts to understand and reconcile the contradictions that shaped me. Using fractured materials associated with traditional “women’s work,” I embed the Gibson Girl - a century-old symbol of both idealized femininity and New Woman independence - within a landscape of intersecting signs and symbols. Pictures and patterns marketed to women in the form of dishware are nipped and shaped to create and disrupt the andamento that links one scene to the next.

“Burning Bridges” is captioned: “She finds relief among some of the old ones”, referring to the way a book can reach through time, place and circumstance to connect with a reader and provide relief from isolation. In this mosaic, the widow is engrossed in reading, books piled and tumbling around her as imaginary characters weave their way into her mind and body, feeding a fire that eats at the boundaries of her world.