Private Collection Series - Plate Bohemian

My work centers around personal narratives that explore grief, ancestry and family relationships. While I primary focus in sculpture, installations and collage the work submitted here also features painting. These two pieces are part of my “Private Collection Series” which consists of paper plates, cut and painted to replicate originals from the Philadelphia Museum of Arts’ Euro Decorative Arts Dept. As museum objects, these plates have assumed value, and by replicating them with Crayola classpack watercolors on disposable paper plates, I’m interested in centering the subject of value, but also the nature of collections and inheritance. My ancestors were almost all from Ireland and fled during the Great Hunger. I often think of what was lost in their migration, what treasured family objects were discarded. This series is in some ways a fantasy of mix matched china that I imagine my grandmother, who raised me – would have loved to own and would have passed down.