ABSTRACT
In earlier years, Gergen Mary fancied the possibility of taking up sculpting as a pastime. However, after spending some illuminating hours with a professional sculptor, it became clear to me that this fantasy would remain dormant. The sculpted properties of a piece of Styrofoam caught his eye. Charles Horton Cooley had written in 1902 about self-understanding as a reflection of other people's perception: Each to each a looking-glass reflects the other that doth pass. A second and more recent exploration was stimulated by the fact that winters in Pennsylvania can bring about long periods of cold, grey weather, accompanied by a monochromatic wilderness. A final adventure into the plastic arts is more radical. One thing that had bothered Mary about the Fantasy Family was that it seemed an intrusion into nature. Relational theory has been primarily concerned with relationships among human beings, and as Slife and Richardson properly pointed out, this is a limited vision.
