Canine conflict does not a War and Peace make.

By Lise Funderburg

I blame my 138-word essay, “What Bad Owners Say at the Dog Park,” on the photographer James Casebere. He and I were at the same artists’ colony in Italy some years back, and we seemed to have coinciding coffee break schedules, where we would join forces against a perplexing stove in the drafty kitchen of our castle. The extraordinarily detailed and hyper-realistic constructions James is known for involve specialized tools and materials and teams of assistants, none of which or whom he could schlep to Umbria for six weeks. So he put aside his steroidal dioramas and dedicated his residency to making sculptures, small wire croquis that (as far as I could tell) referenced tornadoes.

“I’m expanding my practice,” he explained.

It’s a phrase that has stuck with me since. It’s permission to explore rather than…