Artist Statement
These photographic still lifes intentionally disorient viewers by manipulating scale versus reality. Tightly cropped photographic details from the miniature dioramas in the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago provide the image sources. When made into large-scale prints, the photographs reveal the crude details of these tiny subjects, depicting objects that are presented larger than their actual miniature size while representing things that are normally much bigger.
This layered manipulation of scale creates confusion and potential discomfort in viewers. The warm color palette and nostalgic references to traditional still life compositions work against this disorientation. From a distance, viewers are drawn to what appears to be a conventional still life, only to discover upon closer inspection that something feels wrong—at this enlarged scale, the details appear rough and crude.