Work samples

  • Plate: Family Tea Set
    Plate: Family Tea Set
  • Wallpaper: Family Tea Set
    Wallpaper: Family Tea Set
  • Toile Wallpaper: Family Tea Set
    Toile Wallpaper: Family Tea Set

About Caroline

Caroline Creeden is a fiber and ceramic artist from Maryland. She has a BFA in Fibers and a MA in Teaching from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Currently she is working on a MFA at Towson University. Caroline teaches photography and art in the Baltimore area. Most recently, she was awarded the John D. Rockefeller Library research fellowship to study the role of oyster shells in Colonial American life. Previously, she was awarded the France-Merrick Fellowship to run an… more

She Owned Them: Toile and Family Tea Set

Physical objects are passed down in families from parent to child, grandparent to grandchild. Many of these items are valued by an individual or family for keeping their heritage or memory alive as time passes and the original owners pass on. We understand ourselves and our family through these objects, the memories they hold, and the physicality of them. Much of my own upbringing was surrounded by ancestry, memory, and our old island along the Georgia coast. My own research and artistic practice revolces around reexamining my own history and that of others. This tea set depicts the complexity of the white antebellum woman through historical cartoons, newspaper illustrations, and sketches that mock her pure ideal; instead, focusing on her vulgarity, intelligence, vanity, violence, and determination to keep her power within her home and community. The designs reference 17th and 18th century Staffordshireware pottery and 19th century toile wallpaper designs. Various plants traditional to the Southern coast of the United States, such as cotton, magnolia, and marsh grasses are present within the designs. Thus allowing the beauty to hide amongst the ugly. The final tea set and toile wallpaper will be installed in various antebellum ruins, marshlands, and coastal regions along the coast of Georgia in order to place the physical material amongst its own history.

  • Toile Design #1
    Toile Design #1
  • Teapot Design #1
    Teapot Design #1
  • Toile Design #2
    Toile Design #2
  • Toile Design #2 (Detail)
    Toile Design #2 (Detail)
  • Toile Design #1 (Detail)
    Toile Design #1 (Detail)
  • Toile Plate #1
    Toile Plate #1

The Old Family

Within the private confines of a home, families curate their own history. Through the inclusion of portraits, furniture, and passed down relics, individuals present the narrative of their own family by preserving specific memories and materials. Much of my own childhood was playing in the shadow of a space my grandmother curated of our ancestors' portraits. This space in their home evoked great love for those people and honored their memory. Decades separated from that room and installation, I consider how histories are remembered, what is revealed when we curate our own personal histories, and what do we decide to leave out? This collection explores how family's represent their own histories within a domestic space, focusing on aspects often fogotten or overlooked. The Old Famiyl represents a family owning a plantation on an island off the coast of Georgia during the 19th century, reflecting their personal imagery, the land they occupied, the enslaved persons, and the material aspects of the region.
  • Man
    Man
  • Man and Woman
    Man and Woman
  • Man
    Man
  • Woman, Silver Gelatin Print
    Woman, Silver Gelatin Print
  • Wallpaper
    Wallpaper

Memory of Shells

The sound of crunching  oyster shells is evocative of walking through a historic building or community. As people walk on the shells the material becomes smaller and smaller, slowly becoming dust and almost unrecognizable as shell. Oyster shells are significant to coastal regions: food, economy, ecology, and architecture. In this performance piece, I walk on top of ceramic oyster shells that have been molded by hand with photo transfered imagery of historic people from the coastal Georgia region. As I walk over the shells, the memory and existence of these people and the shells slowly begin to break and disappear. Like our memories, the oyster shells become a distant reminder of an experience.
  • Shells
    Shells
  • Shells
    Shells
  • Shells
    Shells

Tabby Prints

This collection is a series of silver gelatin prints of sites in the American South documenting tabby buildings. Tabby concrete was commonly used to construct buildings along the coast lines of South Carolina, Georgia, and Flordia in the 18th and early 19th century. It is created from oyster shells, homemade line, water, and sand.
  • Tabby Wall, Kingsley Plantation, FL
    Tabby Wall, Kingsley Plantation, FL
  • Tabby House, Jekyll Islandm GA
    Tabby House, Jekyll Islandm GA
  • Tabby Wall, Jekyll Island, GA
    Tabby Wall, Jekyll Island, GA
  • Tabby Wall, Kingsley Plantation, FL
    Tabby Wall, Kingsley Plantation, FL
  • Tabby Wall, Kingsley Plantation, FL
    Tabby Wall, Kingsley Plantation, FL