Three Season Home

Three Season Home - Altered commemorative plates, three 8” diameter plates

The original drawings for these porcelain plates were produced in the mid-19th century by Currier & Ives as lithographs illustrating American life of the people, in a medium accessible to the people. A century later, when these plates were mass produced, the reprinting of these images was resplendent with romantic nostalgia. The Greatest Generation who bought them in droves, was shaped by the Great Depression and the atrocities of war. These plates were no longer representative "of the people", but rather revealed a hunger for a place of simple means and wholesome desires.

In Three Season Home I carved for rent and sale signs into each plate. Having lived through recessions and housing crises I added these familiar silhouettes as a way to reconnect this imagery to shifts in how Americans visualize the house and home today. The concept of a fixed location has give way to an understanding far more liquid over the span of just a few generations.