art in the garden

Kat Riley
Pollywog
Wax and oil paint


This piece is an attempt to make a series of foreign objects that harmonize with the pre-object world. Before there were telephones, skyscrapers, power lines or roads, the world had only rocks, grass, hills, and desert in it. It has been our job, as humans, to add all the objects.
With this in mind, What is the difference between an architect and an artist, a tailor and a factory worker? It makes which objects we make seem almost trivial, as does our place in our society being determined by it. But which objects we make, however, do matter—because what we make is what we fill our world with. Each object has a relationship—direct or indirect—to all the objects that came before, as well as a relationship to the rocks and grass that preceded those.



Kat Riley
Pink Flamingo
Fabric and wood



I deliver pizzas for a large, corporate pizza chain about four days a week. (It’s a living, as they say…) One thing I’ve noticed, in doing this, is the ornamentation on the lawns of all the comfortable, middle-class homes I deliver to. It seems the more money a family has, the more money they’ll “invest” in lawn ornaments, such as pink flamingoes, garden gnomes, etc. So I began a series of lawn ornaments, perhaps critiquing what I was convinced were a symbol of Middle America. However, after a bit of research, I discovered while pink flamingoes are of American origin, garden gnomes had an intensely German beginning. Interesting for me, essentially being a second-generation German-American.