This film screened at Mass MoCA in
2009 - 2010, and screened at the
New York State Museum as part of
a solo exhibition of Joan Steiner's
work in 2007 - 2008.

In her many books and exhibitions,
artist Joan Steiner has created a deceptively innocent, three-
dimensional miniature trompe l'oeil
world—a hotel lobby, an old-fashioned
general store, the Taj Mahal, a
cathedral interior—out of ordinary,
everyday objects—pretzels, tape
dispensers, a garter belt, even deer
vertabrae—with such seamless
artistry that, at first glance, her works
seem to be simple dioramas. The joy
of her work is in discovering the
hundreds of objects hidden within
conventional forms, so conventional,
in fact, that the eye initially passes
them over. But Steiner's work is not
only deceptive in its simplicity; it's
subversive, as well, calling into
question the surface attributes of
a normative visual world we take for
granted where, in fact, nothing is as
it seems.