Jeanne Garrison

Porcelain houses have been my playthings for a while; I am still investigating them. They are purposely odd, and also familiar. Proportions are strange, windows and doors impossible, scale out of whack. I enjoy putting them in different combinations in different environments to see what they mean then.

These boats are carrying the words of Matthew Arnold's poem "To Marguerite", one stanza to each small boat. The poem describes the isolation felt by human beings who "surely, once, they feel, were parts of a single continent", but are now islands divided from each other by an "unplumbed, salt, estranging sea". The boats derive from a number of poem boats I have made, carrying various texts. Here each travels alone through the sea that divides them.

I am always drawn to multiples of things. The risers and pots are all individual pieces. Their arrangement can be changed, allowing many iterations of the "gallery" space.