Kate Moran's work gives us glimpses of a self-contained world that runs by its own rules, populated by miniaturized figures that recall antique mechanical toys. They seem to exist in the psychic space between familiar and strange, human and robot, child and adult, close and faraway--a place without a name. Her motorized or hand-cranked figurines in porcelain, bronze, brass and steel often abstract and isolate some basic anatomical functions of the human body; like jointed dolls they move their arms and legs, open and close their eyes in a prescribed and narrow range of motion. Moran's automata seem to simultaneously endure and accept their world as they make its implacable laws visible with their repetitive movements, predictable as the interaction of a ball and socket or a belt and pulley. They don't appear to struggle against their limitations but simply exercise their predetermined possibilities without apparent rancor: that seems to be the point.

Moran has stacked the cards, however. As the engenderer of these somewhat androgynous little creatures, she has given three of the figures a freer movement; they stride in place using their whole legs and swinging their arms from the shoulder. The opposite row of three, more "ladylike" figurines have been granted legs only from the knees down and arms only below the elbow which open and close rigidly on a horizontal plane. (From the exhibition Vitreous Humours, 1998: Six mechanical figures, cast vitreous china, each figure 42"x14"x12") In such subtle ways, Moran codes her view of the female image as a constraining one in society. (In her most recent work, the figures and parts of figures are more sexually ambiguous.)

The implied social dance between the pairs is fixed in time forever, the distance between them immutable. But Moran has given them a consolation, although cold comfort it may seem. She has crafted, with the meticulous skill evident in each medium she employs, a most extraordinary and unexpected object. During her 1997 Arts/Industry residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin where she made the figurines of cast porcelain in soft, domestic pastels, she also cast in white porcelain the repeated segments of an old-fashioned radiator, bearing the imprint of the original iron decorative mold. (From the exhibition Vitreous Humours, Radiator, 1998, vitreous china, rubber, copper tubing, 32"x166"x10") Larger than lifesize, stretched to almost 14 feet long, this commonplace household fixture takes on the metaphorical power of a hearth, the tribal fire around which her chilly mechanical dolls could warm themselves. The steam vents are each in a separate color and suggest, in a way both comically absurd and poignant, the nipples of the lifegiving mother-object.

Formally echoing the radiator, although different in subject and medium is another stretched piece more than twelve feet long (Moran says she tends to think "horizontally"), composed of a series of small pages on which are carefully drawn a tiny music manuscript. (From the exhibition four hands for two pianos, 1999-2000: Rachmaninoff's Opus No. 18, Concerto No. 2, four hands two pianos, pencil on painted paper, brass shelf, each page approximately 4"x2.5", total size 4"x146"x1") The score is accurately represented, with notation for four parts, and could conceivably be read and played by two tiny musicians. The viewer who draws close to the pages and follows the chart of the music can seem to hear the melodies, rich but distant, faraway in memory and imagination. Moran miniaturizes the precise language of music to absorb us deeply into its reality, so we can imagine the links between the mind that reads the music, the emotion that infuses it and the physical skill required to execute it. In miniature worlds, often introduced in fairy tales, representation is dominated by imagination. By paying close attention to Moran's Lilliputian score, we can enter the poetic space where the mind's eye sees the mental architectures that contain music.

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