For years, we have been instructed that food is for eating and not for playing. Prohibited from flicking peas across the table, blowing bubbles in our milk and mashing items on our plates together, food for us has become a medium for one thing, and one thing only: eating. But then there are those who like to break with convention — those who disregarded parental disapproval — who have elevated a messy pastime to a lauded art form.
Artists all around the world have begun swapping oil paints for sugary confections. The National Liberty Museum right here in Philadelphia features two full-size jelly bean replicas of children. Sandy Skoglund’s colorful sculptures represent the importance of embracing diversity.
Less colorful than jelly beans but just as iconic, Peeps also substitute for common art materials. Peep artist David Ottogalli used his creative art to promote voting; his political message required over 3,000 Peeps and the final piece seamlessly combined patriotism, activism and wit.
We’re especially captivated by the addition of a participatory element to food art. Self-proclaimed “sustenance artists” Mimi Oka and Doug Fitch’s collective experience includes theater direction and production, architecture and furniture design, finance and, of course, Parisian culinary education. Their collaboration combines practically all of these talents and interests, so the result is often simultaneously a performance, an artwork and a (fantastic and unusual) meal.
At one such “Orphic Feast,” the pair displayed “paintings” they had assembled of handmade colored pasta at a gallery. Guests purchased their favorite works, which were then cooked and served in situ. Another event involved making French-inspired dishes and baking them inside encasements of clay formed into objects. Oka and Fitch then composed still lifes with the pieces, only to surrender them to guests wielding hammers who happily released their dinners from their clay prisons.
This past summer, they baked a baguette large enough to feed the entire French village of St. Benoit du Sault as part of the Festival Excentrique. They had help from the villagers, who were encouraged to bring knickknacks or other food items to bury in the 20-meter long loaf, turning the meal into an “edible archaeological dig.”
By engaging guests in the process of creativity and with each other, Oka and Fitch’s work transcends mere sensory indulgence. Similarly, Skoglund, Ottogalli, and Savini’s works invite contemplation beyond the realm of the purely aesthetic. As it turns out, the coolest job in the world is not only enviably fun, but also edifying.
