Teabags, 2001
Center: 16"H x 10"W x 10"D, Ceramics
Exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
Teapots transformed into women’s handbags (Teabags) explore social issues of beauty, privacy, femininity, seduction, luxury, status, and values.
Flamboyant, theatrical glazes symbolize socialite women’s roles as decorative and dependent at evening events as trophy accessories staged at glamourous galas with handsome escorts on whom to lean.
Like an exotic right of spring merged with lush flowers and exaggerated stamens, feminine iconography becomes symbols of fertility, beauty, and the erotic.
Teabags remind us of the “purse-istance” women’s societal roles that have not changed significantly.
Conspicuous consumption and overindulgence flirt with beauty, the absurd, and the vulgar.
These amenities include so few Americans and a warning that the masses who suffer have power few can imagine.
