Cookie Cutter Houses (2022)

“A view through shrouded glass” contains a venetian blind that is placed in front of a halftoned stock image of an American suburban house. The viewer is given the ability to manipulate the view through this venetian blind, whether it exposes the image behind it, or if the viewer chooses to shut it off completely. With this piece, I was envisioning how when one lives in a majoritively white American suburb, the views from the windows in these artificially crafted cul de sacs remain pretty consistent, in the way that these neighborhoods are all mimicking a similar model, and have manufactured this aspect of monotony. 

The cookie cutter houses are tied onto a green elastic cord, the same ones used for the air fresheners, and are tied randomly around a wall rack. This is making a reference to the gas station display where one normally finds these products, and how they are so associated with that type of assortment and location.

This can be further explored in terms of the reproduction and mass production of these fairly obsolete and uniform structures that mimic those of mass circulated imagery and manufactured goods. This lack of community centers can cause those to seek and to form a community through association of what items are synonymous with being Jewish. Owning nice cars, tacky jewelry, Lululemon, Starbucks, being loud. These are some of the attributes that are attributed to Long Island Jews.The cookie cutter houses also become an object that is central to your view, if you depend on a car to get around.


The object is placed in the rearview mirror, and dangles in the corner of your eye. When thinking about the idea of processing imagery, it has come to my realization that the way I filter images through my mind becomes so much more scrutinized than with other mediums, such as painting. This is to do with the saturation of content one sees on a day to day basis that is primarily image based.
These patterns of behavior can also be compared to how we view advertisements and billboards. For the most part, we are so overwhelmed with choice, that companies often have to create intricate marketing tactics that force someone to actually look at what they are trying to say.
Thinking about the idea of the olfactory also comes up in this work. These objects are also synonymously associated with scent, and a certain freshness of a ‘new car smell’. When thinking about the associations that I have made between these cookie cutter houses, it is this sterile nature that coincides with the identical framework and monotony of the everyday suburb. This monotony is something that people specifically crave. It is the knowing, and not having the fear of the unknown. By taking an iconic tree emblem of the car fresheners and turning it into a house, not only am I displacing the recognisability factor of it, I am also stripping its most integral feature, smell. I could either leave these ceramics bare, which draws the viewer in to expect something they do not get, or, I could coat the back of each ceramic piece with a thin layer of scented wax, which mimics a new car smell to play into this recognisability factor instead.