In The Age of the Marvelous, Joy Kenseth defined the word "marvel" as understood several hundred years ago: "anything that lay outside the ordinary, especially when it had the capacity to excite the particular emotional responses of wonder, surprise, astonishment, or admiration." In seeing Rosemary Laing's work, one can't help but exclaim, "Marvelous!"
Laing has covered a patch of rainforest floor with brightly patterned carpeting. The result is discomforting. Are we in nature? Is this nature? Or is it actually comforting to find something familiar in the wilderness? Are we in a sumptuous salon? This is a place where man belongs and yet doesn't belong. We have made a space for ourselves and yet we feel like occupiers, despoilers of virgin land.
