Sideboard with Blue China

2013, 111" x 300" x 22", glass, wood, paint, cold fusion, permanent collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, photo credit: Margaret Fox

“I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.”-Oscar Wilde

Sideboard with Blue China combines refrains of human predation with aspects of the human body, depicting things such as wheat, corn, birds, and fish paired with fragments of human anatomy such as feet, hands, heart, intestine, and genitalia.

Sideboard with Blue China examines themes of growth and decay, desire and consumption, and the literal embodiment of us in our objects. The piece was inspired by two historic sideboards: one by Bulkley and Herter, exhibited at the New York City Crystal Palace in 1853 and the other from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, attributed to an undetermined east coast city from same time frame.

2013, 111" x 300" x 22", glass, wood, paint, adhesive, permanent collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, photo credit: Eva Heyd

Detail of male and female plaques

2013, 111" x 300" x 22", glass, wood, paint, adhesive, permanent collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, photo credit: Margaret Fox

2013, 111" x 300" x 22", glass, wood, paint, adhesive, permanent collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, photo credit: Margaret Fox

Sideboard with Blue China installed in the Astor ballroom during Precarious Possessions, a solo exhibition at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, photo credit: John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art