Is paradise a garden? A caslle keep, girding for titanic war? 
Or a tableau of the ideal, suilable for habilation by porcelain figurines? 
In Paradise Lost (1667) John Milton vividly conjures these worlds and more. 
I wanted to layer figures of canoon nostalgia directly with Milton's words. 
This Adam is Lhe father of all generals,. The quote behind him (from Book IV) 
is a foreboding declaration of fealty before of the ultimate test: 
My exalLation, and my whole delight, 
That thou, in me well pleased. declares! thy will 
Fulfilled, which to fulfil is all my bliss. 
Scepter and power, thy giving. I assume, 
And gladlier shall resign, when in the end 
Thou shalt be all in all, and I in thee 
For ever: and in me all whom thou lovest: 
But whom thou hatest, I hate, and can put on 
Thy terrours, as I put thy mildness on, 
Image of thee in all things; and shall soon, 
Armed with thy might, rid Heaven of these rebelled; 
To their prepared ill mansion driven down, 
To chains of darkness, and the undying worm; 
That from thy just obedience could revolt. 
Whom to obey is happiness entire.