statues and icons

Hello, I'm learning about Christianity currently and this is something that I've had some hard time understanding by just reading about it online. What is the purpose of statues/icons? What is the difference between the two? Do they serve different purposes? What is the difference between...

I was originally going to wait until I moved to my new apartment, and built my apartment there, and shared that with you, but I'm with this current one for now. So I thought in this, thread we could talk about home altars, and other Catholic decorations for the home, such as icons and statues...