Allan McCollum is a young New Yorker who satirizes with such elegance that irony becomes beautiful. A "vehicle" is a carrier, a container, an instrument for conveyance - and these vehicles are perfect in the Latin sense perfectus, filled to the brim, completed. But what they are filled with, what they carry and contain, is themselves, since they are solid plaster. Not only can the "lid" not be removed, but there is no space within to be opened. Potty pantechnicons for self conveyance, carriers of self-identity yet the vehicles appear in the likeness of a normal jar or container. Their round forms and the delicate presence of their colour all mask a profound deceit because every artistic device has been employed to make them appear to be what they are not. The idea is essentially terrifying: the dichotomy between our real selfishness and our outward likeness as human, those creatures made to be receptive of God. McCollum makes the profound morality of the parable acceptable by sheer beauty. We delight in his half-humorous jars, with their policeman-like helmets and portly solemnity. Yet at some level we must hear what the Perfect Container is saying. How prepared are we to be emptied, to be perfect in the Jesus sense, a container for God, for prayer, for love? How radically will we allow Him to scoop out our self-stuffed fullness, to drill into our impacted pride, to chisel off our sealed helmet-heads, to let in the light which will fill us with His Spirit?