Projects
Building
Barn Razing
Betty Rymer
Tapping the Audience
with.draw
FLO(we){u)R
Past Present Perfect
re.pur.pose
Work-In-Progress
redress
site:WARE:Chicago
Johnny Appleseed
PastTimes
Practical Culture
K[ne(e){a}d]
Excavating History
Watershed
Souvenir
K[ne(e){a}d]: A collaborative work with Joe Madrigal in Clay and Bread
Illinois, Ohio, Pittsburgh, and Darmstadt, Germany
This social sculpture evolved in response to ceramic history and the question, “What would it mean to insert the technological advance of cooking in terra cotta vessels into a gallery space?” We have now performed this piece in four cities. While our concerns focused on how to communicate the connection between history, action of the body, and the integration of text, it turns out the HOW of baking the bread is what has continued to move this work forward.
For the first exhibition, we baked bread at home and brought it into the gallery to share. For the second, we baked in the space by bringing a convection oven into the gallery. For the third, with the help of the Society for Contemporary Craft’s director Kate Lydon, we not only baked in the space and encouraged people to make dough, we brought our molds to an artesianal bakery and used their wood-fired oven. In addition, doppelgangers baked bread once a week in our absence. Baking in the homes of community members seemed the next iteration. When Ute Ritschel brought this project to Darmstadt, Germany, did just that-she arranged for us to bake in a different home every morning. The intimacy of making work in someone's home is a direct catalyst for conversation.
In Darmstadt, the gallery was replaced by the public space. The installation, including our molds, daily tasting and daily dough preparation were situated in the main historic commercial center, the Weisse Turm (White Tower). In addition, Ute collaborated with Professor Anke Messing of Darmstadt University to facilitate a Sunday Brunch at Prince George's Garden. This baroque garden is currently an urban agricultural project (still in the baroque layout, but with veggies where you might expect roses). Seven interior design students worked for a semester to choreograph, organize, make the dishware, and choose accompanying foods for the bread at the brunch.
Read an article about the project here.
K[NE(E){A}D]
![K[ne(e){a}d]](../images/brotzeit on the square web.jpg)
![K[ne(e){a}d]](../images/Brotziet Dough web.jpg)
