Rebecca Stevens

MFA Ceramics

The Home and the Self: On Perceptions of Feminine Virtue

Reflecting on my own feelings and experiences with domesticity and on the larger patterns of socialization they reveal, I use decoration and domestic objects to explore my discomfort with the stereotypes of feminine virtue that I grew up around in the American South. These specific ideas of socialized feminine virtue center around domestic service and a focus on appearance.

Working primarily in porcelain with the addition of textiles, I embrace materials, styles, and methods of making that are associated with women and girls. Through hand-crafted tableware, dolls, and decorative patterns I critique gendered forms of socialization while questioning historical and contemporary perceptions of feminine taste.

Formally, the work references eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European porcelain tableware and figurines, folk traditions such as doll making, and popular twentieth century narrative tableware, such as the Norman Rockwell porcelain series. However, instead of representing stories of nostalgic domestic Americana, I reflect critically on the regressive gendered hierarchies that are being perpetuated at this particular moment in American culture. Overall, this work is a personal demonstration of the ways in which craft, decoration, and mess can serve as resistance against a “traditional” version of feminine virtue.