CRYSTALLIZED SUGAR
Crystallizing is a cooking process using sugar to coat fruit or flower petals as a means of preserving them. To crystallize also means to clarify—to define or to make clear. Each painting from Crystallized Sugar responds to the identifying name of an actual cake that I found in old cookbooks. While cakes honor events and rites that surely have historical or cultural significance, the significances of these cake recipes are unknown to me. My painting process is at first sculptural, and formally is based on simple geometry. I decompose found wood objects--old picture frames, serving bowls, toys, bric-a-brac--reducing the abandoned tools to basic forms. I then reassemble the parts, creating a new construction. I color the structure, using paint like icing, to unify and empower the new form. The re-purposed domestic tools and the appropriation of the dessert title permits a new read, a mnemonic intention for "cake." This series is ongoing. I have 85 complete “cakes”, and many more in progress. Approximately fifty were included in a single exhibition in 2009, Director’s Choice: Obsession, at Center Galleries, in Detroit, Michigan, documented by artist Gilda Snowden.