The Flamingo in the Garden

Many Americans create fantasy tableaux in their yards and gardens using pink plastic flamingos, cement ducks, wooden wishing wells, electric Christmas lights, Halloween harvest figures, and a variety of other objects. Yet this aspect of American material culture-so common in our vernacular landscapes-has received limited scholarly attention. This study explains the origins of American yard art and examines its many social and aesthetic permutations and functions. Fieldwork and interviews conducted in four regions of the United States document a wide geographic range of yard art and reveal the commonalities and variations in its practices. By integrating contemporary fieldwork data with cultural history and iconographic analysis, this work builds an interpretive framework for an important kind of public display. The analysis also yields insight into the cultural role of the American home, relationships between public and private spaces, the persistence of the handmade object within a predominant commodified consumer culture, and the role of material culture in constructing, representing, and negotiating social categories. You'll never look at a pink flamingo in quite the same way again!