Final Project
My final project is focusing on food waste within Denison University's dining halls.
At dinner today, I asked friends to leave their plates with me when they were finished--I have a stack of about ten plates.
The title of my project is called "Save Room for Dessert." I plan to ice these layers of plates and food as if it were a layer cake, leaving a small sliver of the "cake" un-decorated, so viewers can see what it really is they should be finishing. The cake will be set on my tray from dinner, along with my other used plates, napkins, cups and silverware.
I want viewers to consider what we've been conditioned to do as food consumers, whether by our families or the settings in which we dine.
research preposal
I've chosen food as my area of research. In my artwork, I want to address all 4 aspects of the "Use, Re-use, Recycle, Discard" theme. This will require research about how food is valued as a resource as well as how it isn't.
Specific topics include: food waste, composting, cultural food tradition/value, vegan lifestyles and alternative uses for normally discarded food items.
The title I have chosen for my first project is "Spinning Straw into Gold."
research for second semester: Sculpture in Context
Food Conservation: An Annotated Bibliography
Putting Surplus Food to Good Use. July 2006. Environmental Protection Agency. 26 February 2007. .This valuable resource from the EPA informs food service providers how to make better choices about dealing with surplus food. It includes interesting statistics about how much food is really going to waste, and offers ideas for easily reducing these amounts. It provided many other links relating to my topic as well.
Waste Not, Want Not: Feeding the Hungry and Reducing Solid Waste Through Food Recovery. Environmental Protection Agency. 26 February 2007. .This article focuses on three important ideas: feeding the hungry, saving disposal costs, and protecting the environment. It is an extremely in-depth and reliable article, and provided me with an understanding of the position of those putting out so much waste.
Don’t Throw Away That Food: Strategies for Record-Setting Waste Reduction. 30 June 2006. Environmental Protection Agency. 26 February 2007. .A list is provided here of nine premium examples of programs that succeeded in reducing significantly their amount of food waste, ranging from 50 percent to 100 percent recovery of food discards. This provided me with many insights on how much use discarded food can really be put to.
Madden, Etta and Finch, Martha. 2006. Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias. University of Nebraska Press.
A compilation of essays is included in this book that gives a wide perspective of how food and culture is perceived in America. This book provides me with the basic overall knowledge of food from an American consumer perspective.
Changing Structure of Global Food Consumption and Trade. 30 May 2001. USDA. 26 February 2007. .This site is packed with information and analyses of global food consumption patterns and the results of these changes. This knowledge is useful for gaining a world perspective of how large of an impact consumption has on the whole earth.
Beardsworth, Alan. 1997. Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society. Routledge, New York.This book explores the social dimensions of food consumption, stating that humans “eat with the mind as much as with the mouth.” This provided a diverse look at our present food system.
Magdoff, Fred. 2000. Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. Monthly Review Press, New York.This book presents an overview of the global agricultural struggle. It is beneficial to my research in that it pinpoints reasons why there is so much hunger in the mist of such great amounts of food being disposed of.
Allen, Patricia. 2004. Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance in the American Agrifood System. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania.
This book most likely will not be a main source of research for me, but it did provide me
with some interesting details about sustainable agriculture and other alternatives.
Albers, Susan. 2003. Eating Mindfully: How to End Mindless Eating and Enjoy a Balanced Relationship with Food. New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, California.Eating Mindfully especially targets college students, and their lack of attention to the importance of what they are consuming. It might be interesting to focus my artwork on this perspective, since I see this lack of mindfulness all around me, every day.
Elkington, John. 1990. The Green Consumer. Penguin Books, New York.This book has been revised to focus directly on American consumers who wish to make their purchases with the least amount of impact on the environment. Environmentally conscious companies and organizations are featured.
Population: Global Food Supply Near the Breaking Point. 2007. Inter Press Service News Agency. 26 February 2007. .This article goes into specific detail into the intense hunger experienced around the globe, and the frightening facts about how quickly our food resources are being depleted. It suggests that simply switching to local crops could save the world’s food supply. It brings about a sense of extreme, serious urgency that is not experienced in many of these other resources.
Goodall, Jane. 2005. Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating. Warner Books, New York.
Despite this topic being of such global relevance, Goodall realizes the responsibility of the individual, for each one of us is taking bites and making choices, good and bad. She provides answers to how each one of us can have some power over the food industry. I feel that this book will be a valuable resource in my research.
Blatt, Harvey. 2005. America’s Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? MIT Press, Massachussetts.This assessment of America’s harm to the environment is not as pertinent to my specific topic of food waste, yet it reveals a full perspective of the American attitude towards the environment. This is helpful to my project, as I should be stepping back to understand the full spectrum of issues concerning wastefulness of resources.
Graham, Mark. 2005. Sustainable Agriculture: A Christian Ethic of Gratitude. Pilgrim Press, Cleveland.Graham’s book offers an honest take on the present agricultural/food system, and makes the suggestion of an alternate, more sustainable and morally justifiable agricultural practice. Keeping in mind to maintain a safe and consistent food supply, sustainable communities, and environmental prosperity, Graham’s ideas are ones I would keep in mind throughout my project.
Taylor, Gary and Scharlin, Patricia. Smart Alliance. Yale University Press, New Haven.This book details the transformation of Chiquita Brands International from environmentally apathetic to a proud example of corporate responsibility by forming a partnership with the Rainforest Alliance. Corporations are huge culprits in producing food waste and doing overall harm to the environment, so this book is a great model for me to understand what must happen to go about solving these issues.
Hughes, Alex and Reimer, Suzanne. 2004. Geographies of Commodity Chains. Routledge, New York.This book takes an interesting perspective on how commodities are exchanged globally, and the links between producers and consumers. The effect of these interactions are analyzed in regards to economies, cultures and politics, which provides me with a vast amount of concepts to work with, all relating in some way to my topic.
Assessing Final Project
Spending two days straight (minus 3 hours sleeping and some classes) in the basement kitchen, though having its depressing moments, was quite a unique experience. As people flowed in and out, the scent of their various meals changing with them, I became associated with the kitchen, and gained a special level of respect. People would ask my permission before using the microwave, and I was confused as one guy walked out saying, "thank you very much."
It was also very amusing/ akward explaining to every single person who entered the kitchen that 1) I was sculpting my parents' heads out of cake and 2) I was not doing it for some strange personal fulfillment. Although it was quite fulfilling, and I think I might continue cake carving for future celebrations. Once I explained myself, I got a lot of positive feedback, and I came to enjoy my makeshift support system. People stayed up with me up until 5 am, supporting me as I entered delirium at times...
Pictures of the process are above (starting from the bottom, up).
It took me about a full day (noon-5 am) to make one cake. I used my Grandmutti's recipe that my dad had loved growing up--Maraschino Cherry Cake. It was delicious, and the fumes actually made some people dizzy (which I am convinced is a good thing). I baked the cake in a giant soup vat borrowed from the dining hall in order to combine three batches and have a super tall cake to work with. To represent the division between the numbers of men and women who are stay-at-home parents, I put two cherries in my father's cake (for the 2 percent of men that stay at home) and 98 cherries in my mom.
Mom ended up being much more moist and delicious, nevertheless, my father was chosen first at my class' gallery exhibit. I set up a table with three placemats with plates, napkins, forks, and cups of water with the pictures I found on google taped on, and a sign that said "Homemade Cake-- Sit and Enjoy--Only 3 at a time, please." When I came back from looking at my friend's artwork, three people were sitting around the cake, but they had not cut into the cake. I insisted that they do so, and they asked where to cut. When I said it was up to them, the first person chose my father's cheek. Someone else walked up and sliced his nose off, and another his chin and lips.
I thought I would get upset watching people devour my parents, which I've labored over for so long, but everyone appreciated the cakes so much that it was a complete pleasure. Prof. Vivero remarked to me that I had become the host of the exhibit, and it surely felt that way. If I disappeared for a minute to make more cups, throw away trash or refill my water pitcher, I would come back to people waiting around the cake for me to supply them with plates and utensils. They trusted me, and relied on me for nourishment.
So, while I hope that those who saw/tried my cake came away with some new ideas, I can certainly say I learned alot from this experience. I felt the importance of the parent-child relationship and the role of nurturing. I explored its traditional association with feminity (when I told a boy I was glad to be out of the kitchen for once after working for so long, he said I sounded like the quintessential woman). I experienced creating an installation for the first time! And, I learned a few things about sculpture. Only one person responded to my project in a hesitant way--one of the professors, I think. He was not a fan of installation art, he said he prefered to browse art/sample my cake while standing, and resisted being seduced by the artists who desire people to take part in their experiment. I disagree with him completely, so I voiced to him that what I feel to be important is what the viewer gains from being exposed to art, and the level of one's involvement in the art determines how much they get out of it. One who maintaints a surface observation of a piece cannot gain the same understanding as one who chooses to immerse oneself in it.
I really like istallation art. And cake!
Final Project Evolution
Almost 2 weeks ago I began my cake trials. The first one I made (a small replica of a woman) crumbled when I started to put icing on it. So, being in a state of despair, I slapped together chunks to form a head, which turned out looking demonic since it was red velvet cake.
So, I decided to stick with the head idea-- I thought it was something that would make in impact in the consumer's mind. I also knew I wanted to use the umbilical cord as a metaphor for the nourishment parents provide children through cooking. My friend gave me the idea of drawing the umbilical cord out of icing on the tablecloth while people ate the cake. Looking back on the project now, I would've drawn umbilical cords on the plates. Anyway, I got to look up pictures on google of umbilical cords and feel really creepy about it.
I also did two more trials at school. I had by this point decided to make two cakes--a woman's head and a man's head. I had no supplies at all--I had one heart-shaped cake pan in which I stirred the cake mix, a pasta serving spoon I borrowed to stir the mix, my friend's face towel as an oven mitt, and a tiny blade broken off a kitchen knife which I borrowed to carve the sculpture. I tore a picture of a woman out of my friend's magazine to model after, and the caption next to this woman said "Mom." I started to refer to the sculpture as
my mom. When I served her at the Bandersnatch, I took the first taste, biting her entire nose off. I later heard my friend mention that biting is a sign of a lack of voice within the household. I must say that fact is pretty fitting to my situation... I think at this point I arrived at the decision to create a sculpture of the heads of both my mom and dad.
Sculpting my parents' heads, I thought about my relationship with my parents and with relations between children and parents in general. I also was very intersted in the act of nourishing and caring for those depending on one on a daily basis. I typed in "cooking" as a google image search, and the pictures I was presented with are very revealing of the worldwide responsiblity of cooking/family caretaking. I can't recall seeing any pictures where men were cooking a family meal, but what actually surprised me was that the vast majority of pictures were from countries other than mine.
Visiting the original websites of these pictures revealed to me many strict gender social constructions, such as women in certain regions of China being unable to eat dinner in the presence of others at the dinner table. She must remain in the kitchen.
I know that in the US this idea of only women staying at home and attending to the children is opening itself up to males.
Statistics from rebeldad.com:
AT HOME DAD NUMBERS
147,000
Census Bureau, 2005 (based on 2004 data, Excel file)
rebeldad.com analysis98,000
Census Bureau, 2004 (based on 2003 data)
rebeldad.com analysisAlso
additional rebeldad.com analysis105,000
Census Bureau, 2003 (based on 2002 data)
rebeldad.com analysis18.5 percent of fathers with working wives
Census Bureau, 2003 (based on 1999 data)
rebeldad.com analysis1,915,000
Census Bureau, 1997 (based on 1993 data)
22 percent of fathers
Spike TV survey, via Time magazine, 2004
rebeldad.com analysis80,000 (Japan)
Social Insurance Agency, as cited in newspaper reportrebeldad.com analysis155,000 (UK)
Cited in newspaper report, 2004 (story now in paid archive)
rebeldad.com analysis11 percent of fathers (UK)
Early Learning Centre, 2004rebeldad.com analysisMEN CONSIDERING AT-HOME FATHERHOOD
56 percent
Spike TV survey, 2004 rebeldad.com analysis40 percent
careerbuilder.com, 2003rebeldad.com analysis"Almost half" (UK)
Pregnancy and Birth Magazine survey, 2004 (based on newspaper report)
rebeldad.com analysisI believe significant involvement with both parents is very important, and this was reinforced by statistics from the US Census Current Population Report on Custodial Mothers and Fathers and their Child Support:
Children without a father in their life are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to end up in jail, and four times as likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems.
(
http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/site/infores.php)
Also:
Almost 20% of 6th - 12th graders have not had a good conversation lasting for at least 10 minutes with at least one of their parents in more than a month.
(Peter L. Benson, The Troubled Journey: A Portrait of 6th-12th Grade Youth, Minneapolis, MN: Search Institute, 1993, p. 84)
This is true for me. People's emotions towards their parents are so varied, and usually so strong, so I was interested to see how different people would go about eating the cake (if they would be timid, which cake they would choose, and what part of the head they would eat).
The concepts behind this project are flowing at me now.
Thinking about my final project
My preposal:
Analyzing my research thus far, I have noticed that among the common threads of women in my family—and most families—is the skill of cooking and idea of nourishment. The stereotype of women belonging in the kitchen has distracted from the importance and deep significance of sustaining life through prepared food.
For my final project, I plan to rethink the common perception of a woman’s role and try to uncover the immense value behind something that has so much been taken for granted/ expected of women. I have chosen to explore this issue through baking. I will create unique “cake sculptures” that represent the traditional roles of women, but I will do so in a way that also pushes those who devour the sculptures to dig deeper! I will do further research to understand more clearly the part that nourishment plays in a woman’s life, and the importance it has held within my lineage. I desire to explore the connections between nourishment and other qualities of women in my family. The recipes for my cakes will be those obtained from my family members.
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Since then, I've been talking with people about my topic and am now starting to gather ideas for how this project will really take form. I spoke with my advisor, Christine Armstrong, about my interest in art, and how I was concerned about it conflicting with my desire to obtain a degree in pastry arts after Denison, and how I truly dream of becoming a pastry chef in France. She assured me I can certainly combine the areas of art, food and french culture. In fact, in one of her French classes the students chose to study food art, and prepared crepes in an artistic way. It was a very encouraging talk, and afterwards I google searched food sculpture, and the first website I discovered was pretty interesting. Here are some pictures I took from
http://sickflash.com/food_art.html
Paris' Persuasion and Timmy's Tumble
My topic being feminism, Christy's being childhood and Sarah's memory, we had to create characters representing our topics and create a situation in which they interacted. I chose Paris Hilton because I feel she is the representative of a lifestyle of young girls that is growing in popularity. Though most people are understandably disgusted by her, it is funny how many growing girls are shaping themselves into something resembling Paris. She's a symbol of what is nowadays perceived as desirable and fun.
Our scene that we created out of our sculpted wax figures consisted of a child named Timmy being interrupted from his time of imagination by Paris Hilton. Timmy and Christy's octopus cowboy of Timmy's imagination are hanging from the ceiling, swinging and playing, with Raffe music playing. Paris enters, dragging along with her my piece from the previous project (the face with the makeup connected), and the music switches to one of her trashy songs. She lures Timmy out of his state of imagination, cutting him down from mid-air while managing to make a pass at the octopus... it was quite an experience acting as I thought Paris would. As Timmy falls he knocks down one of the children's pictures on the wall of his bedroom, and on the other side is a revealing picture of Paris. Paris departs with Timmy for a party, asking him if he can say, "that's hot."
I've never performed like that before, incorporating my art with puppets, music, acting and impersonation. It certainly helped to prepare me for the spectacle last Thursday. I was pleased with the reaction of my class, which was a lot of laughter. I feel like the plot was quite typical, but touches such as having Timmy and his imaginary friend floating around in the sky and getting cut down by Paris, and knocking down his picture revealed something beyond the surface interpretation.
We created a video from the footage of our performance. Christy, Sarah and I intermingled scenes from the performance with pictures of children's art and of Paris Hilton. We attempted to do so in a clever way, such as flashing to a picture of Paris mostly naked, wearing a cowboy hat after the imagainary octopus' declaration that "I'm a cowboy!" Timmy states, "I'm Timmy, and this is my imagination!" and we then insert a picture of Paris dressed very provocatively. I'd never made a video before, so it was such a foreign experience to me but I liked it, nevertheless.
Spiral Q: Art=Action
I'd say at least 30 people were a part of the environmentally conscious spectacle today on campus, led by Spiral Q. My art class has been working with them since they came to us from Philadelphia last week, and we've been through the process of deciding which issue to protest, how it will take form, and then actually creating the giant puppets for the spectacle. Today I wore a 2 foot long cigarette butt attached to my butt, and I fought the plastic bottles to try to get into the trash can, yelling at them that they belonged in the recycling and I in the trash. We had giant broccoli with passports and sickly, non-organic carrots and other wheezing vegetables. There was a 10 foot earth with a thermometer in it's mouth signifying global warning. Oh, and we had people moving around gloomily with black flags chanting, "Caarrrbon, Caaaarrrrbon...." It was a very sad scene until the giant administrator puppet came and turned the light switch off and the solar panel on, and then our scene basically turned into a fantastic dance party with our drummers energizing the crowd, people chanting and parading and waving enormous flags.
I had a spectacular time being a part of such a spectacle, it really had a lot of meaning and power to it. One of the people we gathered from the dining hall described the music as powerful. Another person was telling me how he would like to use the caged egg costume for his activism group striving for cage-free eggs. The spectacle definetly attracted a decent sized crowd, and I hope there is some kind of aftermath to the event. I really feel like this should become a yearly thing--or even more often.
