Eat Out evolved out of David Shaw’s questions surrounding our relationship to nature, his ongoing interests in sculpture as furniture/furniture as sculpture and what he sees as the permeable interface between matter and consciousness.

Tree limbs stand to support a landscape which is a table top, which is a wood framed mirror that by reflecting doubles its holdings, some of which are functional tableware, some of which are sculpture, and all of which are hand-blown glass. The glass is clear, so discussions of boundaries, transparency, appearance, and disappearance bubble up, and the line between these glass entities and their reflections is a lesson in discernment. Ditto for the distinguishability between sculpture and functional tableware. Many of these tabletop objects have limbs, projections, or emissions that burst or shoot out from a central form into the surrounding space, part celebration, part aggression, and perhaps part an attempt at reproduction. As well there are tree limbs, which come up from under and break through the mirror tabletops and establish a presence in the sky above. When looking into the sculpture, especially while seated for a dinner party and comparatively colorful and animated by our drinking, chewing, swallowing, and talking, we have an opportunity to opt out of the narcissistic interest in our reflection and be reminded that despite our intrusive presence in this still and ghostly landscape, we are indeed an integrated part of it.