The Difference Between a Canyon and a Valley

Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Carolyn Baginski

Graduate Program in Art

The Ohio State University

2012

Thesis Committee:

Rebecca Harvey, Advisor

Charles Massey, Jr.

Todd Slaughter Copyright by

Carolyn Baginski

2012 Abstract

I am interested in the role of the performative and pedagogic with regard to nature. The pedagogic version of nature is built out of images, photographs, paintings, and fictional descriptions that form a collective memory of nature generalized into sublimely grand views, majestic landscapes, and benign animals. The performative moments are the unexpected. These are the moments of incongruity or strangeness that call to question the original idea. I am interested in the shift from pleasant to dangerous.

Each element of the installation has the potential to turn one way or the other.

My work explores a physical world created by allowing several perspectives to exist in the same space. These views form a new, hybrid place, inhabited by a variety of creatures. Within the format of a ceramic figurine, landscape space is stretched, substituted, morphed and abbreviated. It is a world of apparent familiarity, but the pieces are intentionally arranged in an illogical manner. I use color, pattern, detail and decoration as clues for identifying a path through the work.

I work on multiple pieces and parts at once, shifting scale and perspective back and forth among the elements. As I work, the visual manifestation of the ideas gets refined and defined as details are added and subtracted. Each piece is a part of a larger visual catalogue, both recording and investigating my experience of the world.

Sometimes the images are more like dreams than factual accounts. Stories are altered and embellished to read more like a memoir than a travelogue. iii The isolated pocket of the figurine forms a window to a moment, pulled out of context, like a snapshot or a single page from a book. Rather than making the entire place, I am making close up views of particular details. The time and location are changing, so perspective can change from piece to piece. Each element is its own vignette, providing a place to pause within the landscape.

I exploit the idea of a simulacrum in my work. Things are made to be ridiculously, almost naively simple, reflecting an “idea of” rather than having a relationship to any physical characteristics. They are a copy of a copy of a copy. The multiple is important in terms of deciding how much of something is needed for the illusion to become impenetrable. It also anchors the image in the general rather than the specific. I repeat the images as many times as necessary to seem obsessive or over the top. Eventually the image becomes the truth. In my world, the only thing authentic is inauthenticity.

This place maintains a delicate balance, teetering between an ability to drift into an innocent wonderland or a dangerous nightmare. The shifting uses of scale, detail, and color within the idea of a ceramic figurine keep the installation fluctuating between realism and simulacra, fact and illusion and logical and absurd. The result is a landscape full of undetermined potential, ready to be explored.

iv

Dedication

This document is dedicated to my family.

v Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Rebecca Harvey, Steven Thurston, Mary Jo Bole, Charles Massey,

Jr. and Todd Slaughter for all of their thoughtful guidance.

vi Vita

June 2003 ...... Revere High School

2008...... B.F.A. Ceramics and Art History, Ohio

University

2010 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of

Art, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Art

vii Table of Contents

Abstract...... iii

Dedication...... v

Acknowledgements...... vi

Vita...... vii

Table of Contents...... viii

List of Figures ...... ix

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: My Personal Mythology of Nature ...... 5

Chapter 3: Perception, Scale, Detail, Pattern and Multiplicity as Tools for Illusion ...... 9

Chapter 4: Simulacra ...... 20

Chapter 5: The Narrative Animal Figurine ...... 25

Chapter 6: Style and Handling to Create Tone ...... 30

Chapter 7: Conclusion ...... 32

References...... 33

viii List of Figures

Figure 1. Figure, Messien Porcelain Factory, 1741...... 2

Figure 2. Colonial couple marked “Made in Occupied Japan”...... 2

Figure 3. Mollendorf Service, Meissen Porcelain Factory, 1770...... 3

Figure 4. Secret Garden/Home Theater System, B.F.A. exhibition...... 6

Figure 5. The Difference Between a Canyon and a Valley, M.F.A. thesis...... 10

Figure 6. Detail of hawks...... 11

Figure 7. Detail of bases...... 11

Figure 8. Hedge #3...... 13

Figure 9. Detail of patterning used as landscape...... 14

Figure 10. View into the distant mountains...... 15

Figure 11. Turkey vultures...... 16

Figure 12. Storm cloud...... 17

Figure 13. Goat figurine with cloud border...... 18

Figure 14. Detail of sculpted and drawn mountains...... 21

Figure 15. Forest canopy...... 23

Figure 16. Colored branches...... 24

Figure 17. Looming hawks...... 26

Figure 18. Mountain goat...... 28 ix Figure 19. Drawn mountains...... 29

Figure 20. Luscious lands...... 31

x Chapter 1: Introduction

My work, my ceramic installation, explores a physical world created by allowing several perspectives to exist in the same space. These views form a new, hybrid place, inhabited by a variety of creatures. Within the format of a ceramic figurine, landscape space is stretched, substituted, morphed and abbreviated. It is a world of apparent familiarity, but the pieces are intentionally arranged in an illogical manner. I use color, pattern, detail and decoration as clues for identifying a path through the work. Within this logically illogical setting, I impose narratives on animal behavior, developing my own folklore in an attempt to make sense of multiple conflicting views of reality. The animals respond to the viewer with a blank stare, as if to question, “What am I doing here?”

I combine references to specific elements of contemporary visual culture that relate to the construction of landscape. Images from fairytales and American Landscape and French Impressionist painting establish an illusion of nature as factual representation.

I draw from 1950s American home decorating and its use of bold and colorful floral pattern to create a pleasant, idealized atmosphere. My work references Postwar Japanese ceramic figurines that mimic their European counterparts (See Figure 1 and Figure 2).

1 Figure 1. Figure, Messien Porcelain Factory, 1741 (Meissen, 1741)

Figure 2. Colonial couple marked “Made in Occupied Japan” (Unknown)

Like the floral patterning, they are generalizations that become simulacra, objects that seem more real than those they are copied from. I look at European ceramics, specifically Meissen figurines, that seek to establish the existence of a fictional world within the object. Meissen tablescapes display in miniature form a game played by

2 German nobility where members of the party pretended to be peasants living in the countryside as a form of entertainment (Honey, 1946) (See Figure 3).

Figure 3. Mollendorf Service, Meissen Porcelain Factory, 1770 (Meissen, 1770)

These tiny recreations become a world of their own. I assemble these sources in a way that disregards their conflicts, making a strangely disorienting world.

I think of my work as a carousel where one piece leads easily to the next, but they all circle back to the same point. I work on multiple pieces and parts at once, shifting scale and perspective back and forth among the elements. As I work, the visual manifestation of the ideas gets refined and defined as details are added and subtracted.

Each piece is a part of a larger visual catalogue, both recording and investigating my experience of the world. Sometimes the images are more like dreams than factual

3 accounts. Stories are altered and embellished to read more like a memoir than a travelogue.

4 Chapter 2: My Personal Mythology of Nature

I am affected by subtle shifts in my surroundings. Ideas develop from the things and places I experiences on a daily basis. I try to put myself in unfamiliar situations so that I can confuse or startle myself. Here, I can question the truthfulness of what I am seeing.

Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park was half a mile down the street from where I grew up. Perhaps this explains my very particular definition of “nature”. I will always think of grassy fields; rolling, tree covered hills and valleys; and ravines that lead down into creeks as the true definition of nature. Here, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, deer, raccoons, skunks, groundhogs and birds are common, everyday sightings. In this version of nature, there is nothing harmful. It is a tranquil, pleasantly beautiful place with well-traveled paths and informative signs.

This meshes completely with the view of nature described in the fairy tales of my childhood. These friendlier versions of classic stories depict their heroine protected under the green veil of the idyllic forest. Here, she befriends woodland creatures and lives contently, awaiting her prince. Her wilderness is a safe and nurturing place, full of bright colors and happiness.

5 In undergraduate school, my work dealt specifically with the culturally constructed notion of home. I contrasted TVs and appliances with my idea of nature to create an ironic fairytale-like setting (See Figure 4).

Figure 4. Secret Garden/Home Theater System, B.F.A. exhibition

Home became an imaginary place, transformed into a wonderland.

After graduation, I moved to the Hudson Valley/Catskill mountain region of New

York. Because I had never been there, I had a highly idealized and absurd picture in my mind of my new home. It was an assemblage of every image of the region that I could find or remember: part Icabod Crane’s Sleepy Hollow and part mountains of Rip Van

Winkle, mixed with an episode of Sex and the City where Carrie “goes upstate” for the

6 weekend. It would be hilly and wooded, glamorously rural, with apple orchards and chicken coops.

It was nowhere near what I expected. My country home was infested with rats and cockroaches. The woodland of my imagination was in reality so dense, it blocked out any evidence of an outside world, leaving only a few square feet of visible sky. The darkness kept everything moist and mildewy. My foray into nature was less than idyllic and I had a strange feeling of inescapable, solitary containment.

Despite all this, I experienced some unforgettable moments. Walking home at night in complete blackness, far from city lights, I could not see my own hands. During frog mating season, the sound of the croaks was deafening. Snow could keep us trapped inside for days. These occurrences, common in their own way, were so far removed from what I understood the world to be that they became magical.

Being in such an unfamiliar situation, I was forced to address the inaccuracies and assumptions in my definition of nature and to question the binary I had established to contrast nature and the manmade. I had set up the idea that nature and manmade were opposites, the former always pleasant and easy, and the latter harsh and dangerous. I found that nature could embody all of these qualities. I am interested in the role of the performative and pedagogic with regard to nature (Bhabha, 2005). The pedagogic version of nature is built out of images, photographs, paintings, and fictional descriptions that form a collective memory of nature generalized into sublimely grand views, majestic landscapes, and benign animals. The performative moments are the unexpected. These

7 are the moments of incongruity or strangeness that call to question the original idea. For me the darkness, the frogs, and the snow were performative moments.

We have grown to expect beauty and awe from the landscape, to bow down to the splendor and majesty of the vista unfolding before us. Fredrich Church, whose work focused on the Hudson Valley, was one of the premier landscape painters of this genre. It is interesting to note that he found the actual landscape around his studio to be unimpressive and in need of alteration before he could paint it. He added a manmade lake and cultivated the surrounding hillsides to create a more dynamic composition that would reflect his ideas about nature. His paintings seem to be about the deception that becomes the illusion that in turn influences our expectations.

8 Chapter 3: Perception, Scale, Detail, Pattern and Multiplicity as Tools for Illusion

The realization that my own understanding of nature bears little resemblance to its reality made me wonder how I, and therefore we as a society, accept illustrations as correct representations of landscape. Is it just a particular combination of form, color and pattern? In my work, I question how much information is needed to see a place. Within this, I want to know what details are necessary and what is implied by what is left out. In the end, I wonder how much of a relationship the idea has to the real thing. In my installation, I am looking for a believable balance between illusion and physical reality.

Rather than trying to include everything, omission becomes a telling detail.

My most recent installation piece begins as a vista, seen from afar, of two red tailed hawks beneath a canopy of trees, overlooking a valley with a mountain range in the distance. A storm cloud looms on the horizon as turkey vultures circle the open spaces.

The installation is simultaneously full and empty. The actual objects included as representation are spaced and simplified (See Figure 5).

9 Figure 5. The Difference Between a Canyon and a Valley, M.F.A. thesis

A few clouds hint at a wide sky. Mountain tops become an entire range. Green leaves and a few sticks are a canopy of branches. Everything is placed on wooden structures, resembling train trestle or scaffolding. They appear to be a part of the landscape but give the impression that the world is somewhat transitory and only half-built.

The larger than life hawks also appear to be in progress. Detail is concentrated to their faces and some feathers on their wings. The rest is left blank. The hawks are positioned on the tree trunks, but the trunks themselves are posted up on narrow white poles. At the base of the pole is a miniaturized landscape, vastly different in scale from the hawks up above. The effect of both of these inconsistencies is to focus vision on two particular spots, the eyes of the hawk and the landscape far below (See Figure 6 and

10 Figure 7). The blatantly omitted details of the rest of the hawks and the tree serve to blur the image as the eye moves from one part to another.

Figure 6. Detail of hawks

Figure 7. Detail of bases

11 To see something is intentional. We focus on one or two things at a time, having to adjust the eye to see something new. With each adjustment, we agree to give up the ability to see the previous thing. It is impossible to see everything at once. Sight and memory go hand in hand. The brain is designed to hold on to only the information it regularly needs. The unnecessary is forgotten to make room for the new. All that remains is a hazy outline of the original memory. As this line fades, its shape shifts, leading to new interpretations and alternate meanings.

In my work I have continuously ruminated on the cloud formation. Clouds have the ability to obscure and define physical locations. We use them as a reference for height and distance, but their haziness has the ability to blanket the world in foggy obscurity. Under the right conditions, clouds on the horizon easily appear to be mountains. Perhaps if these clouds were green, they could become rolling hills. Further alterations and additions to the clouds, such as patterning, could lead to a more descriptive landscape (See Figure 8).

12 Figure 8. Hedge #3

To me, floral patterning represents the most idealized representation of a garden, orderly and logical, predictable and mathematical, every bloom perfectly beautiful and evenly spaced. It embodies our desire to simultaneously control and revel in nature. I love the floral patterning from the 1940s and 1950s. I use these patterns in several ways.

Sometimes I wrap a form, covering and disguising its shape. In other instances the pattern describes only a small area, hinting at the existence of something more. I use the scale of the pattern to affect the perceived scale of a piece. On similarly sized forms, using larger pattern overwhelms the form, bringing it to the foreground, while smaller pattern pushes it to the background. With pattern I can transform the same piece from a shrub to a distant hill to a cloud, finally resting somewhere between all three identities as a concretion known as a decorative ceramic object (See Figure 9).

13 Figure 9. Detail of patterning used as landscape

I like my scale shifts to be extreme, with objects closer to the viewer being physically larger than their real life counterparts and objects in the distance miniaturized.

This creates an illusion of distance where there is physically very little space (See Figure

10).

14 Figure 10. View into the distant mountains

Perhaps this is where my reference to painting comes in, pointing to the absurdity of illusion on a picture plane. It also works to disrupt the logic of how things are placed in space.

I am attracted to the idea that neither scale nor identity can be pinned down.

Instead the work floats in some in between nebulous cloud. I am trying to create a space that is neither here nor there, despite being comprised of the familiar. The challenge becomes orchestrating a delicate balance between specificity and simulacra, all the while maintaining a location in the realm of the unidentifiable and unplaceable.

I amass many small elements to create larger forms. As individuals, the small objects seem friendly, but as their numbers grow, they develop into something larger and

15 darker. One small turkey vulture may seem benign, but with several soaring above it in a spiral formation, the group seems more ominous (See Figure 11).

Figure 11. Turkey vultures

The shrinking scale from bird to bird implies that the vortex is infinite. A collection of tiny, iridescent clouds becomes a swarm, just as threatening as the swarm of vultures (See

Figure 12). Both hover over the landscape with the potential for danger.

16 Figure 12. Storm cloud

In my work, clouds function as a tool for both describing and obscuring location.

Clouds can be used and located literally, as with the large storm cloud on the wall. The cloud defines the physical space and atmospheric conditions of the sky. Throughout the rest of the installation, the same clouds are used as borders around the figurines (See

Figure 13).

17 Figure 13. Goat figurine with cloud border

These borders confuse the physical location by creating a disconnect in elevation between what lies inside the cloud border and the understood height of the storm cloud. Although the objects are logically placed throughout the space, the clouds unpin them, allowing them to float independently.

I see a similarity in the fluctuation in the placement of my objects to the way I recognize my own location. My subconscious cannot keep up with my brain, so even though I am moving, I expect to see familiar things and as a consequence, mistake the unfamiliar for the familiar.

There is a parking garage on campus that is sided with a reflective metal. At sunset, the reflection of the light and silhouette of the building against the sky make it look exactly like the mountains in Red Lodge, Montana. From the corner of my eye, I

18 am constantly mistaking it. I love this mistake because it transports me somewhere else.

But, I also know that it is not real. It is the fading line, the shape shift.

19 Chapter 4: Simulacra

For me the future is a mythical location, built on photographs, stories and souvenirs of the past. Pursued but unreachable, the future is utopian because it holds within it the possibility of something more or something better (Muñoz, 2009). I am interested in what happens when one finally reaches a desired location. There must be some mixture of reward and disappointment. I question how much of what one sees is influenced by earlier expectations. I wonder if it is possible to separate the real from the illusion.

In my work, I create projections of how a utopic world could come into existence.

Mountains are made as rough cone shapes with painted on “mountain” surface. What I make is not an attempt to recreate landscape, but rather a copy of a copy of something I remember seeing. It bears no resemblance to reality because it does not actually exist. It is a figment of my imagination, a flicker seen from the corner of my eye. The objects and places are not only a combination of this and that, but also neither this nor that.

Postwar Japanese ceramic objects copy their earlier European counterparts. They are not exact copies. Instead, forms are simplified, their details are abbreviated and their color palette is reduced. These small alterations make the objects awkward. When placed side by side, the differences between the original and the copy are obvious.

20 Separated, the untrained eye could easily mistake one for the other. Rather than being symbols of wealth, they are symbols of symbols, simulacra.

I exploit the idea of a simulacrum in my work. Things are made to be ridiculously, almost naively simple, reflecting an “idea of” rather than having a definitive relationship to any physical characteristics. They are a copy of a copy of a copy (See

Figure 14).

Figure 14. Detail of sculpted and drawn mountains

The multiple is important in terms of deciding how much of something is needed for the illusion to become impenetrable. It also anchors the image in the general rather than the specific. I repeat the images as many times as necessary to seem obsessive or over the top. Eventually the image becomes the truth. In my world, the only thing authentic is inauthenticity. 21 Landscapes spring to life through this process. Clouds, leaves and sticks are simplified to a basic shape and repeated consistently throughout the installation. Their colors are generalized to the point of becoming inaccurate, opening up the opportunity to change them all together. The colors of the objects are altered based on familiarity. I reference the glazing of “Made in Occupied Japan” ceramics, using bold colors that fade from one to another, sometimes with no relation to the original thing the object is modeled after. Color and form changes make the clouds, leaves and sticks into alternate versions of themselves. The utterly ridiculous now points to the existence of another version of understanding. In this world, the new logic is the rule.

Because my world is built out of false facts, I can invent new solutions to things I do not understand. If I do not understand how one mountain connects to the next, I can leave the connection point out. I understand the mathematical logic of the golden mean and fractal patterning as it pertains to tree growth, but in terms of how to practically apply this knowledge, this seems impossible. Instead, leaves are tied up on string, hung as garlands from point to point, to become as much used car lot as forest canopy (See

Figure 15).

22 Figure 15. Forest canopy

The decorative and ornamental are continuously alternating roles. The ornamental becomes a descriptive element. What initially appears to be ornamental, or a frivolous detail, becomes an important description of the landscape, giving a direction for how to understand the world. The lines of the string form an outline of the tree’s foliage, carving out a leaf filled canopy from the ceiling space. The garland acts like a drawn line, just like the familiar outline of the clouds, bushes, and hills. The addition of the leaves to the lines identifies the content of the form. The same thing happens with the cloud and flower wreaths around the figurines. At first glance they seem purely ornamental, but they provide information about the placement of the object in space.

Truncated and tamed, in the scalloped bases, the cloud form returns to ornamental.

Through reinvention, branches are no longer completely necessary. They exist to serve as descriptive information as to what may reside within the tree’s leafy mass. They

23 are perhaps more important placed in a pile on the ground. Here they become a rainbow campfire or a brush pile of beauty (See Figure 16).

Figure 16. Colored branches

24 Chapter 5: The Narrative Animal Figurine

I want my world to be experienced as a narrative, where events are unfolding as the space is explored. The animals provide instructions for how to understand this new world. Their expressions are clues to explain the atmosphere of the landscape. They direct or reflect gaze, guiding ones view through space. They work as guideposts within the landscape, as if to say “Stop here and look.”

The entry point into the space is guarded by two looming red tailed hawks, looking down on the viewer to stare directly at her as she enters (See Figure 17).

25 Figure 17. Looming hawks

The hawks, as objects, are reminiscent of the Meissen porcelain factory’s early large animal sculptures, but these have been brought to life with painted detail and their placement in space. They hover over the viewer, perched on tree trunks, elevated on steel poles. Detail is concentrated on their facial expression, emphasizing the gaze of their human-like eyes. Their stare is part threatening and part quizzical. They leave the viewer wondering what they are looking at and how recent their last meal was. What is their potential prey and is it safe to pass by them?

I am interested in the shift from pleasant to dangerous. Each element of the installation has the potential to turn one way or the other. The birds may have already eaten, the storm may be passing, and the mountain snow may be melting. The mix of beautiful and ominous keeps the world teetering in a delicate balance.

26 The isolated pocket of the figurine forms a window to a moment, pulled out of context, like a snapshot or a single page from a book. Rather than making the entire place, I am making close up views of particular details. The time and location are changing, so perspective can change from piece to piece. Each element is its own vignette, providing a place to pause within the landscape.

For one month the Beartooth Plateau, two miles up in the sky, blooms in a wonderfully chromatic display of alpine wildflowers. Reaching this destination by car is a challenge, involving several miles on switchbacks up a cliffside. Reaching it on foot seems a near impossibility. The weather conditions are unpredictable and dangerous, even in July. Winds and storms sweep through, threatening to blow anything and everything over the edge to its death. The conditions seem unlivable. Not even birds fly this high. Somehow, despite the difficulty, a herd of mountain goats makes its way to the rainbow pastures to graze. These goats are lucky because they get to live in heaven on earth. But they must be lonely trapped on their sky-top paradise, like being locked in a rose-covered tower. I wonder, how do they get there and where do they go in the winter when their pasture is covered in twenty feet of snow?

My mountain goats are each forced onto a tiny slice of rocky land, contained within a ring of clouds or encircled in a wreath’s flowers. Their wide eyes are simultaneously blank and confrontational. At times they seem oblivious to their condition, but at others they are frustrated, defeated or envious. They are firmly attached to the figurine base, but their placement in the landscape space is uncertain. They hover somewhere between the ground and the sky, as if on a cloud. The flowers frame the land

27 but also separate it from everything else, isolating the goats in their lonely world (See

Figure 18).

Figure 18. Mountain goat

Some of the figurine bases have drawn imagery of flowers or mountains (See

Figure 19). These subjects are made in three dimensions in other places. In the drawings, perspective shifts again and both subjects are flattened into pattern. The drawn line and sculpted form are two different attempts at describing the same thing. The objects imply a larger space, but the drawings truncate space. Their yellow background color is so dense and unsky-like that they close the space in.

28 Figure 19. Drawn mountains

29 Chapter 6: Style and Handling to Create Tone

The style of my work is intentionally considered and inconsiderate. In some places, detail is refined and intentional, but in others, figures and forms are heavy and shapes are bold and basic. There is an irony in their simplicity that hints at knowledge greater than what is initially expressed. I am attracted to their constructed naivety as a mask of innocence. The figures can pretend they are unaware, but they make eye contact in a way that suggests that they already know the answer, but they are simply unwilling to share.

Their cartoonishness verges on “cute”. I am using this initial cuteness as an entry point into the work, a friendly welcome into an otherwise confusing world. Takashi

Murakami writes about cuteness as a phenomenon in Japanese popular culture in the catalogue for his exhibition Little Boy (Murakami, 2005). He references the cuter than cute, that which is so cute it becomes disgusting. I like the idea of the menacingly cute or the menacingly ornate, the way a thousand tiny clouds become a storm, a wreath of flowers encircles a perilous mountain peak, or a pile of candy colored branches invite an individual into a world that may turn on you at any point. The apparently innocuous uses its familiarity to wrap one in a sense of comfort, but ultimately delivers him or her to a land of uncertainty.

30 There are three uninhabited island figurines located on their own table in the center of the landscape (See Figure 20). These are the most luscious of all of the figurines, glazed in juicy pinks and dense greens and covered with flowers and trees.

However, this is the only place without any animal residents. Without the animals, these pieces seem desolate and cold.

Figure 20. Luscious lands

There is a clear irony in the idea that the most fertile area could be inaccessible. I play with the balance of irony and earnestness within my work, searching for a meaningful equilibrium. I like the idea that some things just are what they are, but others are complicated by layers of contradiction.

31 Chapter 7: Conclusion

My world lies somewhere between the earnest and the ironic, or perhaps just beyond both. Through my handing of the clay and the repetition of simulacra, the objects and animals become familiar. The events and views become common memories, leaving the viewer with nostalgia for a place that never existed.

This place maintains a delicate balance, teetering between an ability to drift into an innocent wonderland or a dangerous nightmare. The shifting uses of scale, detail, and color within the idea of a ceramic figurine keep the installation fluctuating between realism and simulacra, fact and illusion and logical and absurd. The result is a landscape full of undetermined potential, ready to be explored, even much more so than I have here.

32 References

Bhabha, Homi. (2005). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge Classics.

Honey, W. B. (1946). Dresden China. New York, NY: Tudor Publishing Company.

Meissen Porcelain Factory. (1741). Figure. London, England: The Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved from www.vam.ac.uk/index.html

Meissen Porcelain Factory. (1770). Mollendorf Service. London, England: The Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved from www.vam.ac.uk/index.html

Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.

Murakami, T. (Ed.). (2005). Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture. New York: Japan Society.

Unknown Artist. (Unknown). Colonial couple marked "made in occupied japan" Etsy.com. Retrieved from www.etsy.com

33