Linda's Snowdome with Chess Pieces

My Mother Should Have Thrown A Party When He Died, Linda Carson, 1992

Mixed media: glass globe (no water), chess pieces, black/blue confetti & adhesive lettering; approx. 10cm diameter

Collection of the artist

What you're looking at is the first snowdome I ever made, a breakthrough piece in many ways. It's a small glass globe with a tableau of chess pieces inside: a white queen, three white pawns (one highlighted with gold) and a black king. When you shake the globe (there's no water inside; that's tricky to do & came much later) a shower of black and blue metallic confetti rains on the chess figures. Around the base of the globe, adhesive lettering spells out "my mother should have thrown a party when he died."

I started making the snowdomes as a way to explore intensely personal subject matter in a format that felt "safe" and not too exposed. A snowdome is small, contained, intimate and too kitschy to take seriously. A snowdome is also a very controlled place to work, a place where a good girl can do dirty things without making a mess all over the place.

But do you know what I liked best about the snowdomes, almost from the very beginning? They're the only things I've ever made that everybody knows what to do with.