08/27/2026
We're Doing It ALL Wrong® - 6th Annual Art Exhibition. Open Through September 27th. Visit Saturday & Sunday from 12pm-5pm.
Wake Up!
Janet Pultz (Kirksville, MO)
Stoneware, Porcelain, Slip, Underglaze, Glaze, Borax Wash,
14” W x 11.5” H x 14” D
Artwork:
A Roman poet once observed that emperors used “bread and circuses” to distract citizens as they surrendered democratic rights to cruel, incompetent tyrants. That phrase kept coming to mind as I followed the news of 2025 and watched values and institutions I had thought unassailable in the United States come under attack. From that climate, Wake Up! emerged. I imagine the piece on many levels: as a narrative of small stories across a stage, as a Brothers Grimm-style fairy tale—didactic, funny, and a bit gruesome—and as political satire in the spirit of Gulliver’s Travels. Above all, I hope it offers visual delight. The anachronistic, absurd image of mice living lives of electronic distraction in a crumbling Roman ruin, unaware the cat upstairs has finished off the birds and is eyeing its next prey, somehow makes current horrors easier to bear. Yet these hapless animals bear witness to the suffering next door. Our neighbors may not look like us, but we can all, and may yet be, prey.
Artist Statement:
Nature is a primary source in my work, not only through form, texture, and color, but also through the underlying stories it tells: cycles of growth and decay, vulnerability and violence, predator and prey. I am particularly interested in the tension that emerges when we domesticate part of nature—how intimacy can exist alongside latent brutality. That sweet cat snuggled with us in bed remains, at the same time, an efficient predator, perfectly capable of toying with a mouse or bird until it dies of fright or exhaustion. Currently, I am using that dynamic as a lens through which to consider the contemporary political and cultural moment, in which cruelty is increasingly normalized and collective attention is easily distracted. By placing the predator-prey relationship within the setting of a deteriorating Roman ruin, I draw a connection to classical ideals of citizenship and democracy while emphasizing their instability and erosion.
