Someone must have told the following artists not to play with their food way too many times,
to the point that it became a rebellious habit that some might describe as a psychosis. Regardless of how they became inspired to use food as an art medium or subject, these food artists and sculptors have created some amazing foodscapes, paintings, sculptures and even entire rooms that are at times mouthwatering and at others stomach turning. With masterpieces like bacon villages and a pope made of pizza, here are 15 of the most creative food artists around who truly practice a strange
art of design.
Jason Mecier
Jason Mecier is a mosaic artist who creates portraits made of unexpected materials – namely, food. Potato chips, beans, hamburger buns, candy, cookies, noodles, and pretzels come together to portray the images of celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell, Rachel Ray, Jerry Seinfeld and Kristy Yamaguchi. The subjects of his portraits have left comments on his website like this gem from Boy George: ““How fabulous! I’m a linguine head.”
Christel Assante
French sculptor
Christel Assante uses the naturally delicate qualities of eggshells to create sculptures that are extraordinarily fragile, creating designs that almost resemble lacework in their intricacy. Assante creates custom designs for buyers, working in mostly quail and goose eggs. Each egg takes her about 3 to 4 days to sculpt. The eggs are lit from a small bulb placed inside through a hole in the bottom.
Jim Victor
Sculptor
Jim Victor spends hours in extremely cold freezers sculpting mounds and mounds of butter into life-size figures of horses, children, and of course, cows. Butter isn’t the only food material he works with – he has created sculptures in chocolate and cheese as well as mounds of fruits and vegetables. He also works in traditional media like bronze and wood.
Carl Warner
Deep purple cabbage leaves stand in for a moonlit sea, while salmon slices resemble a lake glittering in the midday sun. Herb grass, broccoli trees, baguette mountains, potato rocks and red onion hot air balloons create surreal landscapes in the foodscapes of artist
Carl Warner. Warner sketches out the scenes first and then uses pins and super glue to hold together his creations, which take a few days each to complete.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Renaissance artist
Giuseppe Arcimboldo was perhaps the first artist to use food to create a mosaic image, though his work was in paint, not made of food itself. This image, ‘Summer’, is part of a seasonal series and features a human profile made up of fruits and vegetables. His work had a surreal quality long before the advent of the Surrealist Art movement, and his ‘food portraits’ no doubt inspired some of the other artists on this list.
Zhanna Bakery
In St. Petersburg, Russia, a bakery called
Zhanna is giving cake artists all over the world a run for their money. Zhanna has created some of the most insanely amazing cakes in the history of human civilization, from treasure chests full of edible jewelry and flats of Pepsi cans to life-size sewing machines and hamburgers that look so realistic, you’d almost be surprised to bite into it and realize it’s cake.
Dieter Roth
(images via: MOMA)
Artist
Dieter Roth experimented with organic materials – including food – while working as a visiting professor at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1965. He smeared chocolate and banana on canvas, assembled piles of chocolate and butter into sculptures and sealed slices of sausage between glass with every intention of allowing them to decay and mold to see how the work would evolve.
James Parker
James Parker of Veggy Art creates some of the most incredible fruit and vegetable sculptures, and has been featured repeatedly on the Food Network, including a Fantasy Fruit Sculpture challenge (for which he won the gold metal in a rematch). Fruit and vegetable carving has been popular for food garnishing in Asia since ancient times and has evolved into works of art that outshine the food itself.
Mike McCarey
Pastry chef
Mike McCarey translates client’s ideas into confectionery masterpieces, making edible sculptures that are about as amazing as they get. Dogs, dinosaurs, musical instruments, shoes, sports equipment and dozens of other items get the sugar-and-flour treatment in sculptural cakes that are almost too beautiful to eat.
Robin Antar
Award-winning sculptor
Robin Antar doesn’t use food as a medium – she carves stone into incredibly lifelike replicas of food including a ketchup bottle, candy, cookies and soft drinks. The Brooklyn artist’s pop art sculptures have been featured on HGTV and she’s currently working on a giant replica of a Heinz ketchup bottle for the company’s corporate headquarters.
Song Dong
Chinese artist Song Dong and a cast of builders created this ‘
Biscuit City’ in a London department store. The scene depicts a traditional Asian city complete with a stadium and a church, and while Dong says he designed a few of the buildings, they mostly made it up as they went along. An estimated 72,000 biscuits were used along with tea, caramels and fruit shortcake.
Ray Duey
Ray Duey of
Chef Garnish uses apples, melons and other fruit as a medium for beautiful table arrangements. Duey is an acclaimed produce carver who uses small, sharp tools to carve fruit into stunning shapes and designs. Duey squared off against previously mentioned produce sculptor James Parker in two Food Network Challenges, winning the first one while Parker one the rematch.
Tamás Balla
This incredible artist animates food in ways you would never imagine, transforming ordinary fruits and loves of bread into pieces and parts of strange stories, complete with offbeat implications, curious perspectives and unique facial expressions.
Davin Risk
Davin Risk, food sculptor and photographer, created three entries for the “
Make a Meatspace Shuffle” competition, which sought creative interpretations of the iPod shuffle as food. The first was made entirely of goat butter, the second was made of parsnips, the third was tofu and finally, the entry that proved to be a winner was created from banana, spaghetti noodles and apple slices.
Prudence Emma Staite
A contemporary artist that works almost entirely in chocolate,
Prudence Emma Staite wants people to experience her art with all of their senses. She creates jewelry, paintings, sculpture, games and even entire rooms from chocolate –but the sweet stuff isn’t her only favorite medium. She also made sculptures of the Colosseum, Spanish Steps and Pope Benedict XVI using enough pizza dough to make 500 pizzas for an exhibit at the Museum of London.
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