Shiny, beady, plastic, creamy, toothsome, trippy, Jennifer Vanderpool’s new installation, Bemused, which opens at Bandini Art on September 16, is a world of sensory overload, where the viewer wanders between Day-Glo Astroturf stalactites and pastel bubblewrap flowers. Almost-edible resin desserts erupt from the pebbles and sand of the natural world, carried forward by mountains of whipped plaster cream.

This is women’s work, the crafting of sweet, artificial confections that both entice and corrupt. In Bemused Vanderpool has conjured housewife heaven, her molded delicacies as indestructible as a Twinkie. Yet all the while, the accompanying video plays scenes of escape and exploration.

Vanderpool is lauded in Europe for her gleeful embrace of the domestic goddess, to whose realm she brings the rigor of art history and discipline of formal sculptural concerns. Bemused contrasts shape and texture, color and spatial relations with a surety that springs from a thorough understanding of art theory.

We can but guess which muse inspires Bemused but, whomsoever she is, her intelligence and sly wit hit their mark – perfectly. Jennifer Vanderpool's Bemused will continue through October 14, 2006.