"Pitcher Collection" is a series of over three hundred works on paper in which images of quotidian objects are meticulously cut out of context and serially collaged onto sheets of handmade recycled paper. As the title suggests, I offer a playful confusion between image and object, proposing pictures of material culture as both physical material and subject of study. Objects that are emblematic, if not iconic, of colonial-era American craft, including stoneware jugs, painted chests, and canopy beds, largely populate this visual lexicon. Each evincing an arresting, undeniable presence, either alone, in pairs, or in charged relation to others, the objects pictured exhibit an uncanny anthropomorphism that verges on the erotic. In this series, I examine and question economies of nationalism and patriotism as circulated through crafted objects and their often fetishized representations.

This work represents an attempt to "process" ideas, taking stock of and making visible a subjective inventory of images that I have used as studio reference material for many years, from former museum picture archives, auction catalogs and ads, how-to books on colonial craft, and interior decorating magazines. Indeed, there are pictures of pitchers and many other objects that are containers for latent metaphors and meanings. In addition to the pre-modern crafts, embedded in the works are obscure references to decorative arts and design history, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the studio craft movement, and to modern and contemporary art as well.