In this miniature museum vignette, a confident lioness strolls with her cub past “paintings” of lions — digitally altered photographs crowned with necklaces designed by the artist. Echoing the hush of a museum hallway, the palette leans into tawny browns and sandy neutrals, with olive-green walls and reddish-brown wood flooring, enhancing the scene’s quiet wit and elegance. A strategically placed mirror catches the cub’s disgruntled expression, adding a spark of humor and relatability.

By setting wild creatures inside a cultivated gallery, the work blurs nature and artifice and invites us to see how readily we project human stories onto the animal world. Playful in tone, and seemingly animal centered, this work reveals how we read animals — wild and domestic — through a human lens.

Materials: Dollhouse miniatures, digitally manipulated photographs, realistic miniature lioness and cub, mirror, wood, paper

Framing:  Custom shadow box with museum glass in a black wooden frame, produced in collaboration with Chevy Chase Art Gallery, Washington, DC.