at ease under trees

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

posted by kristine @ 12:22 AM