Texas Tea Party, 2005
Earthenware
Chipstone Foundation
Erickson created the satirical Texas Tea Party in response to the energy and environmental policies of George W. Bush’s administration. The design is based on mid-eighteenth-century English ceramic figural groups, which typically showed people engaged in conversation or, more uncommonly, drinking tea or punch. Erickson converts the expressionless faces found on the original figures into animated colonial caricatures of Bush. Adorned with oil rig party hats, the revelers drink sweet crude from lusterware teacups and eat “yellow cake,” which is an allusion to uranium. Each figure has a personalized chamber pot filled with gold bricks, a commentary on the relationship between money, oil, and power. A discarded constitution becomes useful in a most unexpected way, while tools of war are scattered like playthings around the base. Atop the central kettle is a vulture, a pointed replacement of the American eagle. Bush wields a familiar logo-shaped teapot as the giddy Secretary of State sits on his knee. In every respect, this group, feasting on the policies that have made them rich and powerful, appears to be oblivious to the outside world.
