The Confidence Game, combines two unrelated groups of objects:  a Victorian era child’s coffin on a double-tiered coffin stand and an arrangement of wooden milk bottles and taped balls. The first two objects are explicit, the second group more obscure.

At the beginning of the 20th century milk bottles appeared as part of carnival knock down games.  In this game of skill A stack of three wooden milk bottles were placed on a small platform or stool, ten feet from a customer who had to knock all three, not only down, but off the platform. What the customer, or mark, didn’t know is that the game was rigged. One or two of the wooden bottles were filled with lead (“shot full of lead”), putting the prize out of reach.

The stacked bottles might suggest human figures, children lined up on risers for school photos… Bottles and balls scattered like the bodies of the latest victims of gun violence—of domestic violence—of political violence. The law now views, guns and property as more valuable than your life or your children’s life: “don’t cry over spillt milk”