My MAP furthered my exploration of ceramics, as a means of producing functional pieces that stand apart from ordinary, generic dinnerware sets. My goal was to bring a quality of artistic sophistication to a ritual we experience every day – consuming food off of hand-built yet functional works of art. My set includes five matching dinner plates, dessert plates, bowls, cups and mugs that were thrown using cone-10 clay. Additionally, I made two larger forms for serving food, a platter and a bowl.

This study was interesting to examine how identity is tied to place. Positioned in the minds of those that give it meaning, “sense of place issues in a stream of symbolically drawn particulars-the visible particulars of local topographies, the personal particulars of biographical associations, and the notional particulars of socially given systems of thought” (Basso 1996:144). In other words, movement within a landscape will assign meaning to different places in that area.

Following an extensive research and documentation process, the Grinnell Historic Preservation Commission, the Grinnell Historic Neighborhood Association, and additional volunteers received good news in December of 2008: Their efforts to put the North Grinnell Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places had been successful. This area is made up of a 3.5 by 5-block rectangle bordered by Park Street, 6th Avenue, West Street, and 11th Avenue (Map 1).