Elissa Armstrong’s menagerie of clay and plaster creatures takes the benign, generic simplicity of commercial ceramic hobby molds to a sinister and intriguing level. While alluding to a Beatrix Potter world with their simple forms and features, her figures are hardly sweet and innocent. Festooned with thick, garish glazes, glitter, decals, and felt, they are bombarded with color and kitsch, creating an aesthetic that caricatures and subverts the history of decorative objects, from the extravagantly decorated porcelain table pieces of the Rococo revival style to the mass-produced ceramic tchotchkes of today. A visiting artist at the Kemper Museum, Armstrong lives in Lawrence, Kansas. This was her first solo museum exhibition.

Above, left: Elissa Armstrong, white fantastic, 2004; earthenware, glaze, felt, polymer clay, 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 7 inches; Courtesy of the artist