here talking to Regina Miller, director of Indiana Memorial Union Craft Shop, and Scott Belleville,
director of the IMU Craft Shop Gallery. And we're talking here before the opening of the first edible
art show. First of all, I'd like to ask, whose idea was it to have an edible art show? Mine, but it
wasn't originally mine. It's been done before, and they're usually a lot of fun kind of things. But
this is the first one done at IMU Craft Shop.
Okay. And who is allowed to enter their work in this show? Anyone is allowed to enter their work in
the show. Okay. And what are the criteria for eligibility? Just basically edible. The more edible the
better. In other words, made out of everyday household foods or tending toward the more exotic items?
The grocery store is just like an incredible art supply store.
and you can just go down the aisles and take your pick. Okay. Are entrants required to allow that their
work be eaten by the end of the show? Yes. Okay. And what are the criteria that are used for judging
the works? Taste, whichever way you want to look at it. Artfulness and originality. So it can go either way.
I mean, there's really no criteria. Whatever strikes a juror is the best or most interesting. How has
the jury been selected for this show? I mean, is it mostly IMU craft shop staff or is it from Bloomington
community in general? The head of the sculpture department at IU, John Paul Dario, was chosen as a judge
for the show. All right.
the exhibitors in the Edible Arts Show. Jamie, we saw you bringing your piece in. Did you have any problems
with getting it here? Well, I think it was just the transportation of it. We had a small car and we
were hopefully to have a station wagon or a truck to bring it into. And since we were kind of late on
and kind of had to make a quick turn, so it did not
I didn't like that at all. The head fell off and kind of hit the floor. But we salvaged most of it.
It didn't turn out too bad. Did you sample your art before you brought it in? Parts of it, yeah. But
most of the parts were meant to be whole, like the cake sections, so we couldn't really dig into it.
Kind of take away from the art. We wouldn't want to do that. No, we can't do that. Do you think you
have a pretty good chance in the show?
Well, excuse me. They wanted to walk right through this way. Well, it's kind of not that we have a good
chance. It's just kind of for fun. Since both the people who worked on the project work here at the
craft shop, we thought it might be nice to have lunch here. You're a craft shop people? I'm a craft
shop member, yeah. So I thought it might be kind of fun to put something together. Are you also a fine
art major? Yeah, I'm a drawing and painting major, which is a lot farther from the sculpture here.
Well, there's art in all of it. Well, thanks a lot. Thank you. I'm here with Mike Van Voren and Beth
Wamsler, exhibitors in the Edible Arts Show. I'd like to know, for example, what prompts artists such
as yourselves to go into such an ephemeral form, which is going to be gone in less than an hour from
now? Mostly this is just a fun type of thing. It's supposed to be spontaneous, not really serious.
People are so esoteric about their work that it's fun just to let loose. In other words, it's sort of
a sideline to your major artistic pursuits? Definitely. I'm not a farmer, so it would be rather hard
to always work in food form. Okay, are you interested in making a living from artistic pursuits or are
you simply doing it as a hobby?
I would say that it would be wonderful to make a living doing artistic pursuits, but to be realistic
here in Bloomington that that's not the situation. We both make serious art, and we both plan to continue
to do it, but it's not something that you look to get the bread on the table with right now. OK, are
you both primarily interested in sculpture, or do you handle other media as well? I'm a painter, basically.
And right now, I'm doing a lot of production pottery, but I do a lot of sculpture also. OK. Do your
edible creations, do you feel that they follow the same patterns or same general characteristics as
the rest, or do you assume sort of a more relaxed personality with them? I mean, you said that this
is definitely more of a fun type of operation. Oh, for sure.
It's not the same at all. My piece turned out to look a lot like some of my paintings. A whole different
attitude goes into it. It is just a spur of the moment thing. Something that I just have to ask, how
does it feel to put the time and creative energy into a work that is just going to wind up eaten within
a few minutes?
About the same as a drawing that you spend hours on and tear up in ten seconds. I think it's great.
I have no qualms whatsoever. Okay. Thank you very much for your time.
judge of the Edible Art Contest. Well, now that the judging's finally over, what were you looking for
as artistic qualities for the art pieces? I wanted to come in and pick some wild guess or see something
that was very outlandish. And then I saw the pieces that looked like they should be outlandish.
And I got tired of looking at them very quickly. And so then I had to try to figure out, well, the ones
I like, am I just liking them because I'm being conservative? Or really, do they have staying power?
So I guess I went to the pieces that had staying power for me that do like you're really getting involved
in making them and transforming the food stuff, too. Because when you know that everything's made out
of a squash and a thing and something's stuck in it,
That's a terrific one-liner, like one of those animals I wanted to give a prize to right away, you know?
And then I realized it was kind of a one-liner compared to the other stuff, so then I ended up gravitating
to the caramel head, and then I went to the, I saw the bread mask, and this collapse of the nose was,
you know, terrifically believable, and I love the transformation going on between the bread sinking
and the wrinkles of the nose.
on the mask, and then after that it got a little harder, because I do like the broccoli bouquet, I thought.
Yeah, that was real nice. So I find myself sort of gravitating towards things that seemed to have, where
there was some careful attention paid to putting together the components of something. And so that really,
I don't know if it's a real descending order when I get down to the bread chair, but I like the idea
of trying to
That was ambitious, to try to make legs that would stand up, you know, put them together in a structure.
And then I wanted to give a place of the chewing gum collage some place. Right off hand, it looked like
a very, very quick impression. It looked like, you know, the classical cubist picture, you know, analytical
cubism, Picasso, whatever.
It also obviously looked like it could be an ad. And then I realized, well, Double Mint would never
want to be represented that way, even though it looked like it could be a good Double Mint ad. So I
decided that it had that kind of crazy combination of slick and funky at the same time. And so that
wrapped it up for me. Because I really wasn't thinking about the whole thing of the contest. I wasn't
sure what was going to happen.
And I didn't know what I could get involved in. I had a hard day, and I said, oh, God, you know, arts
and crafts or something. And then I got into it. If you were asked to do the judging again next year,
what would you be looking for? What would you like to see as an exhibit here? I probably did like the,
I probably wouldn't stray too far from the things I look for this time. Maybe I'd like to see
the idea of things being constructed a little bit more, like that chair idea. Not necessarily furniture,
but it could be, you know, really the transformations of the food stuff, you see. I thought at one point
something, you know, like the paper plate thing, well, you know, that was like naked lunch. Oh, well,
how come nobody did a naked lunch? A real naked lunch, something naked lunch. OK.
So that's what I, you know, going back to the food stuff that you could too easily identify after like
a quick, like the squash with the muppet eyes, you know, which was like a funny one-liner and
very muppet-like, you know, and then after about, you know,
43 seconds, you know, I was ready for something else. So then I found myself going back to things that
had been, you know, worked over and honed and shaped a little bit, like the ones I ended up picking
up. So that would wrap up what I'd be looking for. You know, maybe a little more far out transformations.
without losing it totally. So that's nice. Transformation is what is going on all the time in our culture.
Well, here is part of one of them, would you like to have some? Did you make this? No, it was the gentleman
over there with the ring cake. OK, that's all. Thank you very much.