December 2009 - January 14th, 2010

We are pleased to announce our gallery’s presentation of this extraordinary exhibition of Sarah Lindley’s ceramic sculptures based on 17th and 18th Century Dutch Cabinet Houses.  A genre of Dutch furniture, poppenhuizen were exquisite, miniature houses appointed with all the comforts and luxuries of the Amsterdam homes they reproduced in every tiny detail.  Lindley’s half-scale, skeletal renditions express her interest in the cabinets’ architectural structures, as well as their careful proportions and design flourishes.  Though ostensibly a doll’s house, Petronella Oortman’s poppenhuis cost 30,000 guilders in 1670, almost enough to purchase a real house at that time; thus these follies were clearly not child’s play.  Likewise, Lindley’s sculptures transcend their role as beautiful decorative objects, painting an imaginary, yet informative picture of the elite interiors of this period of material and artistic abundance. Lindley creates more austere poppenhuizen but applies the same obsessive and confounding craftsmanship found in the originals by making them in clay. The results are exquisite contemporary sculpture full of rich, metaphorical content.

Sarah Lindley received her BFA from the famed ceramics department at Alfred University in NY and her MFA in ceramics from the University of Washington. She currently teaches sculpture and ceramics at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. Lindley has received numerous grants and awards for her work and has recently completed a prestigious residency at the Kohler Co. Factory in upstate NY. In addition to her significant solo shows, Lindley’s original, furniture-based sculpture has been included in challenging group exhibitions as far flung as France and Korea.