Like the women in Jenny Bornholdt’s, Women with Pitcher, the poem wraps around the bowl and ‘hold it all together, empty and full, filling and being filled’. First exhibited at Judith Anderson Gallery, Napier, Praising Girls as a good natured poke at the 2008 exhibition of contemporary ceramics, Raising Boys, showing concurrently at The Hawkes Bay Museum and Gallery.
Another version The Women was later made, also an edition of 10.
This poem was first used in the collaborative project with Bornholt and Catherine Griffiths in Conversation Pieces, Collaborative Works in the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington City Gallery, 2002-3.