Shelf Collector Series
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Photographs can be fact or fiction: or they are both. Groening plays with this paradox by arranging "cut" flowers from earlier works in her digital collage. Their hand-drawn liveliness feels more lifelike than the real ceramics captured in photographic detail. A paintbrush stands unsupported: rumor that this still life is imaginary. A butterfly's wing may escape the wooden shelf. Its brilliance is a clue to life or movement that can disrupt the still pots, threatening the porcelain's dense solidity with its subtle fragility.
Are color, delight and whimsy not enough to relieve the visual weight of manufactured pottery? A skeleton in Urn for a Free Spirit summons mystery from burial within the porcelain's translucent glaze. Urns may contain death but are more commonly decorative. Skeletons recall bodies they held: this startling image visually connects the vase's arms and bust-like shape with classical sculpture that inspired its deco style. Groening's bone scans also serve as updates to the skull symbols in 16th-century still lives.
